Albrecht Dürer, portrait of Willibald Pirckheimer (1524), intaglio, 182 mm x 115 mm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984.1201.23. www.metmuseum.org.

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a celebrated painter and print-maker, was born in Nuremberg as a son of a goldsmith and apprenticed to the painter Michael Wolgemut. He travelled to Italy twice, and was praised by Desiderius Erasmus for the brilliance of his engravings. He became friends with the Nuremberg patrician and humanist Wilibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530) and drew illustrations in books and manuscripts owned by him. This is a portrait of him at the age of 53, a portly figure in a fur-lined coat – he suffered from gout (and even wrote a witty ‘praise’ for it: Apologia seu Podagrae laus (1522)). The quotation, ‘Vivitur ingenio, caeteris mortis erunt’, is reminiscent of an inscription in his portrait of Erasmus, which contrasts the frailty of physical existence with the eternity of the spirit. In the right-hand corner is Dürer’s monogram – keenly aware of his own talents, Dürer consistently signed his work to mark his authorship.