Retrato de una veneciana

Durer reached Venice in the late autumn of 1505, on his second trip south, and this is thought to be the first thing he painted once he arrived. He had come partly to answer the Italian painters who, as he complained in letters home, admired his prints but doubted a German could handle colour. So he studied the man he admired most in the city, the aged Giovanni Bellini, and you can feel Bellini in the soft light on this young woman's face and the warmth of her skin. Who she was is lost. Her tied-on sleeves and her hair caught up in a small draped cap mark her as Venetian rather than German, a local woman Durer set down while he was still learning the city.