Portrait of Albrecht Dürer
ca. 1538
Medium
Woodcut
Dimensions
sheet: 12 5/8 x 10 1/8 in. (32 x 25.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The George Khuner Collection, Gift of Mrs. George Khuner, 1975
Accession Number
1975.653.107
Tags
Art Historical Context
This woodcut portrait, created by Erhard Schön around 1538, presents a dignified image of Albrecht Dürer the celebrated German artist and printmaker who had passed away a decade earlier. As a posthumous tribute, the work honors Dürer’s enduring influence on Northern Renaissance art. Schön, active in Nuremberg like Dürer, employs the woodcut medium to capture the sitter’s distinctive features—his flowing hair, thoughtful expression, and direct gaze—while emphasizing the graphic clarity that defined early 16th-century printmaking. Woodcuts like this one played a vital role in the period’s cultu...
About the Artist
Erhard Schön
He was famed as a popular printmaker, with attributions including around 1200 illustrations for 116 books and about 200 separate woodcuts. Among the best works are the woodcuts that he and Hans Springinklee made for the "Hortulus animae", published in Nuremberg in 1515 by Johannes Koberger. It was one of the most popular pre-Reformation anthologies of prayers, published in at least 20 German and L...