Retrato de un joven

Durer painted this in 1506, during the second of his long stays in Venice, where the German artist had gone to learn what the Italians knew about colour and to sell his work. He was in his mid-thirties and already famous north of the Alps for his prints. His letters home from that year complain about Venetian painters copying him while praising the old Giovanni Bellini as still the best of them. You can feel Venice softening his hand here, the young man's face modelled in warm light against a dark ground rather than drawn with the hard Northern line. That same year in the city he finished a large altarpiece, the Feast of the Rose Garlands, partly to prove he could paint in colour and not only engrave. The soft dark hat throws the whole upper face into shade.