Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher

Dürer's portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher from 1526, one of his last major works, depicts a prominent Nuremberg patrician at the height of the northern humanist culture that Dürer had done so much to create. Holzschuher was a leading member of Nuremberg's city council and an associate of Willibald Pirckheimer, Dürer's closest friend, placing him at the center of the intellectual circle that had shaped Nuremberg's role in the early Reformation. The portrait's penetrating psychological depth and the explosive energy of the sitter's curly white hair and intense gaze make it one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance portraiture anywhere in Europe. It was painted as Dürer's health was declining and within two years of his death.

The extraordinary rendering of the sitter's wild, curly hair and piercing blue eyes creates an image of fierce vitality, with Dürer's precision in rendering individual hairs and wrinkles achieving an almost hyperreal effect.