Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher

A city councillor of Nuremberg, aged 57, looks out from a panel painted by Dürer in one of his last years. His name and age are written right beside his head.

The story behind the painting

Albrecht Dürer painted this portrait in Nuremberg in 1526; it is now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. The sitter, Hieronymus Holzschuher, was a local patrician who served as a senator and as a septemvir, one of the seven leading members of the city's councils. In the same year Dürer also portrayed Johann Kleberger and Jakob Muffel. These were his final years: according to his Wikipedia biography, he then devoted much energy to theoretical writing, and his painting output was small. Besides this portrait, the paintings named from that period are a Madonna and Child, a Salvator Mundi and two panels of apostles and evangelists.

What to look for

The portrait shows Holzschuher alone, bust-length, on a panel about 51 by 37 cm. In the upper left corner Dürer wrote a Latin inscription giving the sitter's name, the year of the Lord 1526, and his age, 57. The inscription works like a label carved into the picture, telling every viewer exactly who this man was and when he was painted. The source does not describe his clothing or expression in detail, so the best guide is the painting itself: a face recorded by a master who had spent decades studying human features, now portraying a fellow citizen of his own city.

Meaning and intent

The panel has the same dimensions as Dürer's portrait of Jakob Muffel, another Nuremberg dignitary painted that year. This has led scholars to speculate that the two may have been commissioned for some official celebration and shown in the city's town hall. If so, the portrait was more than a private likeness; it presented Holzschuher as a figure of civic responsibility, one of the men who governed Nuremberg. The precise inscription of name, year and age fits that purpose, fixing an individual in his public role and his moment in time, as a record for his community.

Legacy

Coming so late in Dürer's life, this portrait is one of the last paintings by an artist who had made portraiture central to his work. His Wikipedia biography lists it among only a handful of paintings from those years, which makes it a rare witness to his final style in oil. It also preserves the face of a man who would otherwise be known only as a name in council records. Today in Berlin, Hieronymus Holzschuher still looks out at visitors, labelled in Dürer's careful lettering, a citizen of Nuremberg remembered because a great painter took the time to study him.