Portrait of an African Man

Until 16 January 2022, the Rijksmuseum presents 100 Renaissance portraits, from Dürer to Sofonisba, in the Remember Me. Portraits from Dürer to Sofonisba exhibition. Today, thanks to the museum, we present this amazing Albrecht Dürer drawing from the collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, which is on view in Amsterdam. Please note that the museum may be closed on the basis of the current Corona situation. If it is open, enjoy and hurry up if you would like to see it yourself at the Rijksmuseum!

Around 1500, artists in Northern Europe started to make more and more studies of heads and portraits from life, without a specific purpose. One of the artists who excelled at this was Albrecht Dürer, the ground-breaking painter, engraver, draftsman, and art theorist from Nuremberg. His vast drawn oeuvre of about a thousand sheets includes many impressive portraits of relatives, fellow artists, or unidentified people, all profoundly moving in their human vulnerability. A particularly poignant example is the Portrait of an African Man, the earliest known drawing of a Black person in Western European art. We know nothing of the man in Dürer’s drawing, nor of the meeting between artist and sitter, which may have taken place in Nuremberg or in Venice. Yet we have the feeling that we know him. With a supreme control of the black chalk and keen powers of observation, Dürer seems to reach the core of his individuality, free of the stereotypes of Black people we encounter long after 1508 in European art.

P.S. You can read more about the Portrait of an African Man and other fascinating works from the Remember Me exhibition here!

P.P.S. If you love Dürer as much as we do, check out the print of his famous Hare, printed in amazing quality and available in our shop.  :)