In Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63, how is the abstract discussed?
Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63 is the title given to a small March 1514 charcoal drawing by the German printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer, now in the Kupferstichkabinett museum in Berlin. The portrait is a tender but unflinching physical study of his mother, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514), completed two months before she died. Dürer was close to her, and after her death wrote that she had "died hard" and that "I felt so grieved for her that I cannot express it".In its bleakness, the drawing has been compared to his two great 1514 engravings, Melencolia I and Madonna by the Wall. It is Durer's second portrait of her; his c. 1490 oil on oak panel painting now in Nuremberg is today generally accepted to be either an original or a copy of a lost portrait of her. The drawing was bought in c. 1877 by the Kupferstichkabinett from the Firmin-Didot auction house in Paris during a period of acquisition of over 35 Dürer drawings by the gallery.
Berlin Melencolia I printmaker Nuremberg Kupferstichkabinett charcoal Albrecht Dürer