Watercolours and Drawings

We are more than five hundred years away from Diirer's birth. (He was born on 21st May 1471, in Nuremberg.) Those five hundred years may seem long or short, according to one's viewpoint or mood. When they seem short, it appears to be possible to understand Diirer and an imaginary conversation with him becomes feasible. When they seem long the world he lived in and his consciousness of it appear so remote that no dialogue is possible. Diirer was the first painter to be obsessed by his own image. No other before him made so many self-portraits. Among his earliest works is a silverpoint drawing of hirnself aged thirteen. The drawing demonstrates that he was a prodigy - and that he found his own appearance startling and unforgettable. One of the things that made it startling was probably his awareness of his own genius. All his self-portraits reveal pride. It is as though one of the elements of the masterpiece which he intends each time to create is the look of genius that he is observing in his own eyes. In this, his self-portraits are the antithesis of Rembrandt's.