Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63 [SEP] creator
Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63
Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63 (German: Bildnis der Mutter mit 63 Jahren) is a charcoal drawing from March 1514 by the German printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. It is a tender but unflinching study of his mother, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514), completed while she was gravely ill, two months before she died. Dürer was close to his mother and after her death wrote that she
panel and Dürer's 1514 charcoal drawing "Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63". Fedja Anzelewsky agreed with the attribution, noting that both portraits bear, on their reverse, the catalogue number recorded in the Imhoff inventories, as well as "precisely the same design of masses of dark clouds".
Anzelewsky speculated that the father's portrait, which was not listed in the 1628 Imhoff inventory, had been broken off and sold to Rudolph II of Austria. Hans Hieronymus Imhoff's lukewarm description of