Featured on PDR in the collection Albrecht Dürer’s Pillow Studies (1493)

In his early twenties, after years of wanderjahr-ing across Europe, Albrecht Dürer returned home to Nuremberg, now fully trained in his craft. During this moment of transition, the young artist completed a double-sided line-drawing in pen. On one side, we find a self-portrait of Dürer. The artist is bodiless, except for an outsized hand, posed as if holding a pen too thin to see. A pillow appears below his shoulder-length hair, pressed into a hatched shadow, which mirrors the darkness of his palm. While the artist’s portrait is believed to have been a preparation for Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle (1493) — considered “one of the earliest independent self-portraits in Western painting” — the presence of hand and cushion create an unlikely trinity.…