Portrait of a ...

Inscription on the bottom of the frame in black IM.1.4.9.7. IAR.X GEMACHT. MEINS. ALTERS. IM. 35. The portrait is executed in a realistic and delicate style typical of the southern German renaissance. Epecially the hands and the reproduction of the hair show the skill of a true master. The painting corresponds well with the other portraits executed by Dürer in Nürnberg during the late 1490s.

The portrait was first attributed to Albrech Dürer by Olof Granberg. Since then the painting has been associated with both Holbein and most lately Bernard Strigel. Although the portrait show some similarity to a few portraits executed by Striegel it can’t ignored that all of those derives from around the year 1520. His name is not mentioned in any of the known sources util he appears in the tax records of Memmingen in 1505. There he is recorded as member of the council in 1517, and later as chief warden of the Painters Guild, before being active in Vienna in 1520, 1522 and 1525. It is therefore highly unlikely that he would have executed this portrait in 1497. In contrast, it fits in well with the chronology of Dürer, as this was precisely the type of portraits that he executed during the last years of the 1490s in Nürnberg. This was originally one of two paintings connected to Dürer owned by Carl Gustaf Wrangel. The other one, a hare on parchment signed and dated with the Dürer monogram AD 1502, was sold at the auction of the Magnus Brahe Collection, in Stockholm 1845, lot 89. Both of them possibly belonged to the collection of Rudolf II in Pargue and were taken as war booty by the Swedish army in 1648.