Erasmus of Rotterdam

Portrait engraving was a significant aspect of Albrecht Dürer’s late activity. His portrait of the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus is his largest and most complex. Dürer had drawn the sitter on a visit to the Netherlands in 1520. By 1525 Erasmus lamented that he had still not seen the promised print. Returning to the project, Dürer borrowed the composition from a painting of Erasmus by Quentin Massys (Louvre, Paris) and inserted his earlier bust-length study. Seeing the engraving, Erasmus noted that the likeness was “not altogether striking.” Later observers have often criticized the composition as awkward. Dürer’s technique, however, rises to a level of differentiation unusual in the late engravings. In their focus and conspicuous detail, numerous passages approach still-life. The light has a pervasiveness and a mystery that suggest both the scholar’s theological concerns and the artist’s own late spirituality. Then there is the conceit of the frame in the background, rhyming with the print’s shape, shedding light like a window but instead bearing inscriptions. The first, in Latin, identifies the artist and the sitter. The second, in Greek, notes, “His writings offer a better likeness.” These inscriptions may refer to the circumstances of the engraving’s creation. In any case, the portrait becomes an extraordinarily modern meditation upon the nature and limits of visual representation.