Portrait of Dürer's Father at 70, 1497 by Albrecht Dürer
Canvas Print - 3061-DUA

The background looks almost scratched into being. Behind the old man, a rosy, brick-tinged red runs in streaks and threads, as if the brush had been dragged through wet paint again and again. Against that restless field the figure sits very still: a black cap pulled low, gray hair curling out at the ears, and a long olive-brown gown that swallows the body in heavy folds. Only a few fingers surface at the bottom, clasped where the sleeves meet.

The face carries the picture. Light falls from the left across a high, furrowed forehead, hollow cheeks and a mouth pressed into a thin, unsmiling line. The eyes are pale and slightly hooded, turned toward us with a look that is neither warm nor unkind, just watchful. Lettering along the top edge names the sitter: Albrecht Dürer the Elder, the artist's father, shown at seventy in 1497. He had come to Nuremberg from Hungary, worked there as a goldsmith, and taught his son the craft before the boy turned to painting. It is tempting to read that trade in the face, the patience of someone who spent his life on small, exact work.

This panel has a well-documented journey. In 1636 the Earl of Arundel traveled to Nuremberg and came away with two works attributed to Dürer, intended for King Charles I of England: a self portrait now in the Prado and this Portrait of Dürer's Father at 70. A royal inventory of 1639 describes it closely, mentioning the black cap, the yellowish-dark gown, the hands lost in wide sleeves, the reddish ground, and a surface covered in cracks. After the king's execution in 1649 his collection was sold off, and the picture eventually reached the National Gallery in London in the early twentieth century. Four versions exist, but only this one fits that old description.

Those cracks, which formed as a single thick layer of paint dried, have since been hidden by restoration. Yet they point to the curious truth about the picture. The streaky handling of the background is unusual for Albrecht Dürer, and so is the color - he tended to set his sitters against dark grounds or landscapes, never this pinkish red. Specialists now think the panel is most likely a copy made later in the sixteenth century, when demand for his images grew after his death and painters reproduced his work in numbers. Whoever in Nuremberg chose the gift may not have known, or may simply not have minded.

In a way, that history suits the image. A son painted his aging father, and decades later another hand returned to that face carefully enough that it was fit for a king. What survives is the steady, guarded gaze of a craftsman who seems to be weighing us up as thoroughly as we weigh him.