An Early Modern Business Card: Albrecht Dürer’s ‘Self-Portrait with Fur Collar’ (1500)

When Albrecht Dürer painted Self-Portrait with a Fur Collar (1500), he was not merely painting his true likeness but effecting a bold act of self-promotion. In Düer’s native Germany and northern Europe, since medieval times art was made largely anonymously by people viewed as craftsmen. But Dürer’s recent visit to Italy¹ had opened his eyes to the potential. Artists there had personally developed reputations and were individually recognisable. Upon his return, Dürer may have wanted to achieve a similar status for himself in Germany.

Dürer styled Self-Portrait on Christian iconography,² while subverting some of its conventions. The pose itself is confrontational and full-face, a perspective normally reserved for Christ, as secular subjects were typically painted in three-quarter view. The naturally red-headed Dürer also depicted himself with the brown hair of Christ, and his hand almost assumes the gesture of blessing. Instead of blessing the viewer, however, he strokes an expensive marten fur collar, as if to draw attention to the skill and status with which he had been blessed.

Dürer also removes all traces of context by presenting himself against a solid black background, instead of a conventional landscape. Positioning his initials as if to imply AD 1500, he writes the legend ‘I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg portrayed myself in undying colours aged twenty-eight years’, a testament to his skill at the height of his powers.

The painting was probably shown to Dürer’s fellow humanists in Nuremberg and later hung in the city hall.³ It may well have functioned like an early modern business card: for clients who wanted an enduring legacy, as Dürer himself had achieved with his painting, they knew whom to commission.