Etching, 1645. Signed "Wenceslaus Hollar Bohemus fecit" in the plate.

I. 23.0 x 16.5 cm, S. 24.0 x 17.7 cm. The sheet with a partial Foolscap watermark.

Parthey 1390.

A superb, early impression with all the details distinct.

This etched portrait of Dürer by Hollar is based on Dürer's famous 1498 self portrait oil painting that is now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. According to Bartrum ("Dürer and his Legacy", London, 2002, page 90), "It is inscribed with two elegiac couplets by L. Lancelot, stating that if the portrait were able to show Dürer's genius and character as well as it shows his appearance, there would be no more famous portraitist in the world.

Wenceslaus Hollar, the most prolific printmaker of his period and a refugee from his native Bohemia, spent many years of his life in London in the service of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (England 1585-1646) the great connoisseur and patron of the arts. Together with its pendant, a portrait of the artist's father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder of 1497 (now in the National Gallery, Anzelewsky 48) Dürer's self-portrait had been presented in 1636 by the city of Nuremberg to King Charles I, through the Earl of Arundel year, while leading an embassy to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in Vienna from the English king.

The inscription along the lower edge of Hollar's print indicates that it was made in Antwerp in 1645, after a painting in the collection of the Earl of Arundel."

Provenance
The collection of Engineer and Major Frank Bensow (1883-1969), with the ink stamp verso (Lugt 982c).