(Nuremberg 1471–1528), follower of the 16th century; Albrecht Dürer‘s wife Agnes, monogrammed and dated at upper right AD 1521, tempera (gouache) on unprimed original canvas (16th-century cloth painting), 44 x 36 cm, framed,

Certificate: Univ. Prof. Dr. Fritz Koreny, November 2009. Prof. Koreny relates the present portrait to Dürer‘s silverpoint drawing from his sketchbook done during a journey to the Netherlands in June 1520. Dürer had set out for the Netherlands in the company of his wife and had taken up quarters in Antwerp. From there it was possible for him to travel to Aachen in order to attend the coronation of Emperor Charles V and obtain confirmation from the latter of the annuity granted to the artist by the deceased Emperor Maximilian I. The drawing on which the present cloth painting is based shows Dürer‘s wife Agnes next to a charming girl in ‚Cologne attire‘ and bears an autograph inscription: ‚awff dem rin mein weib pey popart‘(Popppard on the Rhine near Coblenz). The drawing is now preserved in the Albertina in Vienna (see illustration). Prof. Koreny writes: „Dürer‘s monogram and the year 1521 inscribed at the upper right suggest that the painter had knowledge of the relevant information. This, as well as his interest in Dürer‘s life and the wish to pass down to posterity a picture of Dürer‘s wife Agnes, may have motivated the painter to transform the small silverpoint drawing, measuring 13.5 centimetres in height, into an almost life-sized bust. Such an approach seems imbued with the spirit of the Dürer Renaissance, a movement that began around 1570 as a revival of Dürer‘s art.“ Univ. Prof. Dr. Herwarth Röttgen, in his letter of 24 November 2009, confirms the attribution of the painting to the Dürer Renaissance, which according to him is corroborated by „the smooth modelling and the ‚ornamental‘ moulding of the face“.

Technical Certificate: Univ. Dr. Franz Mairinger, former head of the Institute of Colour Theory and Chemistry, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and author of the standard work on age determination in paintings, Strahlenuntersuchung an Kunstwerken, E. A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig 2003, 29 October 2009. Prof: Mairinger dates the painting to the period of the sixteenth-century Dürer Renaissance. Infrared photographs of the portrait have clearly revealed an underdrawing, as well as shadows indicated through parallel hatching (see the infrared photographs of the left half of Agnes Dürer‘s face). Agnes Dürer was the daughter of the coppersmith Hans Frey and his wife Anna, a member of the patrician family Rummel. Agnes‘s first known portrait dates from 1494. Agnes Dürer was primarily in charge of marketing her husband‘s prints. She regularly attended trade fairs in order to sell his engravings, although she normally offered them on the weekly market held in Nuremberg, where she had a stall next to those of the fruit and vegetable vendors. However, there are also documents confirming her participation in the fairs in Leipzig and Frankfurt. From a journey to Frankfurt in September 1505 she was only able to return to her hometown in May 1506 because the plague was ravaging Nuremberg. The marriage of Agnes and Albrecht Dürer remained childless. So the family eventually died out. The marriage of Albrecht and Agnes was not free from conflict. Relevant clues are contained in Dürer‘s letters to Willibald Pirckheimer, in which he writes about her rather rudely, referring to her as an ‚old crow‘ and making coarse remarks. After her husband‘s death, she continued to market his works, since according to their matrimonial agreement she was his sole heir. In 1528, Emperor Charles V confirmed her intellectual property rights in Dürer‘s book On Human Proportion. In her last will and testament she provided that a scholarship granted by her husband to a student of theology be continued.