Portrait of Maximilian I

In 1512 Dürer was asked by Maximilian to participate in extensive artistic projects, which, as the emperor openly admitted, were designed to preserve his posthumous reputation. The project that was most obviously connected with that purpose was the planning of his tomb – never completed – in Innsbruck, and here Dürer was also involved from time to time. In 1518, in a completely different context, he had the opportunity of making a charcoal drawing of the aging Habsburg emperor during the imperial diet at Augsburg. The study (Vienna, Albertina) was the model for a painted portrait, which may have been commissioned by Jakob Fugger, who founded Augsburg’s Fuggerei (the world’soldest social settlement) and the Fugger trading company. Dürer portrays the emperor as an elegant private gentleman. Here the painter adopted an existing type in the tradition of Habsburg portraits but combined it with incomparable mastery of the demands of the state portrait. The emperor is not wearing the outward signs of his high rank; even the otherwise obligatory neck chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece is not worn on the emperor’s body but appears at the upper left in the background. Instead, the desired impression of power and dignity is provided by the way the emperor fills the frame, the precious fabrics and the brilliantly painted fur collar, Timelessness and distance are suggested by the monochrome background. The monumentality of Maximilian’s physical appearance has imperial character; the precise depiction of quiet melancholy and fatigue on his face in no way diminishes the extraordinary importance of the subject. Several interpretations have been proposed for the pomegranate in his hand, all of which may be correct: it may be a private replacement for the imperial orb, a reference to the myth of Persephone and thus to the fact that Maximilian had already died, and/or an allusion to the conquest of Granada by Christian armies in 1492. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010