Portrait de l'apothicaire Holderich Wolfardt

Bernhard Strigel's Portrait of the Apothecary Holderich Wolfardt documents a member of the professional middle class whose technical expertise was essential to community health in early modern Germany. Apothecaries occupied an important social position as purveyors of medicines and agents of learned medical knowledge, and their portraits sometimes included the tools of their trade. Wolfardt's portrait, rendered with Strigel's characteristic directness and formal competence, provides documentary evidence of the Ulm/Memmingen region's professional class alongside the more numerous portraits of aristocratic and patrician sitters that dominate the painter's surviving work.

The portrait follows established conventions of the period, with attention to physiognomic features and costume details that convey social identity and status.