Portrait of the painter Hans Burgkmair (1473) and his wife Anna

Lukas Furtenagel was an Augsburg painter whose double portrait of the painter Hans Burgkmair and his wife Anna, dated 1529 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is one of the most unusual and philosophically charged portraits of the German Renaissance. The couple hold mirrors in which, instead of their reflections, appear skulls — a vanitas device making explicit the memento mori theme latent in all portraiture. Burgkmair was among the leading graphic artists of the Augsburg circle around Emperor Maximilian. Both sitters were around fifty-six when the painting was made, lending the skull-reflections a pointed personal dimension.

Furtenagel presents the couple in near-frontal bust format, each holding their mirror with deliberate calm, the skull reflections demanding careful handling of the curved surface. The palette is restrained and dignified, befitting a meditation on age and mortality.