Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I

Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I brings an elderly face into a commanding arrangement of fur, lustrous cloth, heraldry and words. The emperor looks to the left, holding a pomegranate near the lower edge. Above him, a Latin inscription praises his virtues and records his death. Dated 1519, the painting is a memorial made from a likeness taken during his lifetime. It belongs to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and is painted on limewood, measuring 74 × 62 centimetres. ^[1]

A face surrounded by colour and texture

The broad black hat stretches almost horizontally across the green background. Beneath it, pale hair curls around the ear and jaw, giving the head a lighter, more irregular outline. The projecting nose, lowered eyelids and slightly parted lips make a distinct profile within the three-quarter view. Dürer allows the skin to crease beneath the eye and to sag around the mouth. These particulars hold our attention even though the coat occupies far more of the picture than the face.

The large sweep of brown fur makes the shoulder on the right appear especially substantial. Light catches its long hairs in streaks that turn with the body. Below, the red sleeve breaks into sharp folds, with small bright ridges against dark hollows. Fur appears soft and continuous; the fabric looks crisp and angular. Their different textures make the emperor’s clothing almost tangible against the flat green behind him.

At the lower left, one hand cups the fruit and the fingers of the other come down towards the picture’s edge. The pomegranate provides a small, rounded counterpart to the long diagonal of the fur. Its warm yellow-brown skin belongs to the same colour world as the hands and face. Looking from the fruit towards the head, we cross a large dark area of clothing: the scattered illuminated surfaces seem connected across it.

The emperor wears a hat rather than a crown. The crown appears separately above the double-headed eagle at the upper left, where a hanging fleece completes the heraldic ornament. That little concentration of gold balances the fruit below. The sitter’s bodily presence and the signs identifying his office occupy different parts of the same green field.

The encounter in Augsburg

The portrait began with a meeting on 28 June 1518, when Dürer was in Augsburg with Nuremberg’s delegation to the imperial Diet. His surviving drawing, now in the Albertina, carries an inscription recording that he portrayed Maximilian in the emperor’s small room high in the palace. The museum identifies its materials as black chalk or charcoal with red chalk and possibly white chalk; it also records incised transfer lines. ^[12]

In the drawing, the hat, face and curling hair are already recognisable. The eyes and the corners of the mouth receive close attention, while the garment below spreads out in relatively open lines. There is no pomegranate, no pair of hands and no field of commemorative lettering. Compared with that lightly established torso, the painted coat has considerable mass: the head could remain a stable point while Dürer developed a fuller public image around it.

A separate black-chalk study in the Albertina concentrates on hands holding a pomegranate. The museum dates it to 1519, and specifies that both its written date and its Dürer monogram were added by another hand. It measures only 15.2 × 14.6 centimetres. Here the fruit nearly fills the sheet. The fingers curl around its circumference, their joints and nails carefully distinguished. The study gives the act of holding a weight and structure that would be difficult to invent from a simple outline. ^[13]

These sheets preserve different stages and different kinds of looking. The head drawing documents the encounter with Maximilian; the hand study develops the fruit-bearing gesture. Anja Eisenbeiß describes the latter as having been made using another model. It should therefore not be imagined as a record of the emperor holding this fruit during the Augsburg sitting. ^[14]

Turning a study into a memorial

The Kunsthistorisches Museum explains the close agreement between the heads in the drawing, paintings and woodcut versions through tracing: the features were transferred at the same size. This provided a practical means of retaining the likeness after Maximilian’s death. Such a procedure made the drawing a continuing resource. Dürer could change the portrait’s scale of presentation, costume, attributes and lettering while maintaining the familiar configuration of the face. ^[1]

The related painting in Nuremberg’s Germanisches Nationalmuseum is a separate work on canvas. Its catalogue dates it to 1519 and measures it at 86.2 × 67.2 centimetres; it describes the attached inscription as parchment and the canvas picture as a preparatory version for the finished portrait. Its visibly woven surface gives it a different character from the Vienna panel. Maximilian’s two hands close around the fruit, his shoulders carry the elaborate chain of the Golden Fleece, and the inscription occupies a large strip across the top. ^[15]

In Vienna, the sleeve and hands are more tightly cropped. The great fur collar gives the body a broader, heavier presence, while the chain is confined to the coat of arms above. Messling, the Vienna museum’s curator, considers the unsigned painting on unprimed canvas a preparation for the panel. The sequence matters because it allows us to see the portrait as an image revised through several objects. The final arrangement is more concentrated: the head sits firmly between the spread of the hat and the descending weight of the coat. ^[1]

The original commission remains less certain. The Nuremberg catalogue proposes that Jakob Fugger ordered the portrait as a gift for Maximilian’s grandson and successor, Charles V. It also records that the canvas remained with Dürer and later entered Willibald Imhoff’s collection. The proposed gift would give the memorial a dynastic purpose, linking the dead ruler with his successor, but the patron’s identity should remain a hypothesis. ^[15]

What the inscription asks us to remember

The small letters above Maximilian deserve more than a passing glance. Their compressed lines require a different pace of attention from the immediately legible face. They identify the emperor and praise his justice, prudence, magnanimity and generosity, placing particular emphasis on military distinction and courage. The text records his birth, the length of his life and his death on 12 January 1519, then asks that God receive him among the living. ^[1]

That final prayer gives the portrait its clearest memorial voice. The man’s death is acknowledged within an image that keeps his face available to sight. The wording also tells us how emphatically his reputation is being shaped: its claim that he surpassed the kings and princes of his age belongs to commemorative praise. We can read that claim as part of the painting’s purpose without adopting it as a historical judgement.

Image and inscription consequently offer two kinds of testimony. The face retains asymmetry, ageing skin and individual features; the words assemble an exemplary ruler out of named virtues. Dürer lets both remain visible. The little painted monogram and date at the upper right occupy much less space than this account of Maximilian’s life, but they also locate the act of remembrance in the year of his death.

Why a pomegranate?

The fruit is conspicuous precisely because it is so easily held. Its rounded form can recall an orb, yet its mottled surface and opening belong to something organic. Its presence links a recognisable human action with an attribute that asks to be interpreted.

Eisenbeiß connects it with Maximilian’s personal emblem. She cites Johannes Stabius’s explanation of the Triumphal Arch , in which the pomegranate’s unremarkable exterior and richly furnished interior become an analogy for qualities the emperor would reveal through his actions. She also places the emblem in a dynastic setting: the fruit could evoke Granada, conquered in 1492, and Habsburg prospects in Spain. Her evidence includes its earlier appearance in imperial heraldic imagery and the combination of these meanings in the Fugger Ehrenwerk . ^[14]

This offers a historically specific way into the detail. The fruit could present an ideal of inward worth as well as allude to political and family connections. The Vienna museum likewise keeps its explanation open, mentioning both the Granada tradition and the idea of being more than one appears. These readings do not require every visible seed or fold of the hand to encode a further message. Nor do they demonstrate that Maximilian personally directed every decision in the posthumous panel. ^[1]

The painted gesture remains effective even before its historical associations are understood. The emperor holds the fruit low, leaving his face unobstructed. Its scale makes his fingers look capable and deliberate. In a composition dominated by costly surfaces, it brings the viewer back to the relation between a hand and an ordinary, touchable object.

A likeness that could travel

The Vienna painting belongs to a larger movement of this likeness between media. Olenka Horbatsch’s study of early portrait prints describes the wide circulation of Dürer’s woodcut Maximilian and its rapid establishment as a representative imperial image. She also follows its adaptation by Lucas van Leyden in a portrait etching of 1520: Lucas reversed the model and developed a new setting and pose. The authority of the life study thus reached viewers through images with markedly different surfaces and uses. ^[16]

This helps explain why accuracy of outline could coexist with extensive invention around it. A transferable likeness enabled a memorial panel, a canvas version and printed portraits to address their audiences differently. The Vienna picture gives the remembered ruler an especially dense material presence: pale hair against black cloth, fur against red fabric, and a fruit held within the frame.

The panel’s early whereabouts are less fully documented than its visual ancestry. The Kunsthistorisches Museum records it in the gallery in 1783. That is a secure point in its collecting history; the image’s imperial subject does not by itself establish its earlier ownership. ^[1]