Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman

Date

1505

Description

Creator of the image: Albrecht Dürer
Date of the image creation: 1505
Medium: Oil on wood
Person depicted: Unknown Venetian woman

This image, created during Dürer’s second trip to Italy, depicts a young Venetian woman. The painting on an elm panel is currently held by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The never-completed artwork has a simple intimacy, with the unknown woman painted against a flat black background that accentuates her pale skin and reddish-blond hair. Durer painted other studies of Venetian women. This study seems to be recalled in the pose and colour-tone of a later painting by Durer: ‘A German Woman from Venice’ (1507).

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a painter and theorist of the German Renaissance, born in Nuremberg. Dürer became an influential artist in his twenties, mostly because of his skill in carving with wood-cuts. He communicated with other major artists of his time, including Raphael and da Vinci, and was eventually patronized by emperor Maximilian I. The sensuous style of the present image appears to have been influenced by the Venetian painter, Giovanni Bellini.

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