How does Praying Hands (Dürer) elucidate its Overview?
Dürer created the drawing using the technique of white heightening and black ink on (self-made) blue colored paper. The drawing shows a close up of two male hands clasped together praying. Also, the partly rolled up sleeves are seen.
The drawing used to be considered a sketch (study) for hands of an apostle, whose full picture was planned to occupy the central panel of the triptych installed in Frankfurt entitled the Heller Altarpiece – destroyed by a fire in 1729. The sketched hands appear on the triptych on the right side of the central panel, and although the detail appears very similar, it is smaller in size in the triptych. Recently, a more plausible theory of the drawing is that, in its elaborate execution on precious blue paper, it is rather a virtuoso record of the hands in the painting, which Dürer could bring back with him from Italy to Nuremberg.
The drawing also once contained a sketch of the apostle's head, but the sheet with the head has been separated from it. Overall, Dürer made 18 sketches for the altarpiece. The first public recognition of the artwork was in 1871 when it was exhibited in Vienna, and the image is said to depict the hands of Dürer's brother, one of eighteen siblings.
drawing sketch Altarpiece apostle Heller Altarpiece Vienna praying altarpiece triptych