Portrait of a young man

A young man sits for Hans Baldung Grien in this 1509 portrait, painted during the period when Baldung was the most gifted member of Albrecht Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg. Baldung, who would develop into one of the most original and unsettling artists of the German Renaissance, was at this date still working within the Dürer circle's conventions. His portraits demonstrate solid technical training and an emerging gift for psychological characterization.

The portrait shows the precise drawing and careful modeling characteristic of the Dürer workshop tradition. Baldung's rendering of flesh follows Northern European conventions of high detail and descriptive accuracy. The composition is relatively straightforward, with the sitter presented in a standard format that the young artist would later transcend in his more experimental mature works.