Autoportrait à la fourrure

Dürer painted this in 1500, and the date mattered to him. Many people at the turn of that year in the German lands half-expected the world to end with the new century, and here Dürer, at 28, faces straight out at us in a rigid, frontal pose that painters of his time reserved almost entirely for images of Christ. He gives himself long symmetrical hair, a steady gaze, one hand raised toward his chest. No painter had put himself into that sacred format before. The inscription beside him states, in Latin, that he made this likeness of himself with lasting colours at the age of 28. He wasn't claiming to be divine. He was making a claim about the artist, that the power to create was itself a gift from God, and that the man who painted with his own hand deserved to be taken seriously. The fur collar he wears was finer than a working craftsman would own. He signed it with the monogram he had already turned into one of the first real trademarks in European art.