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IRIS ROEBLING-GRAU

Since it is sometimes easier to understand a work of art via a detour and a comparison, I will start my reading of Saint Teresa’s Libro de la Vida (The Book of Her Life) by commenting on Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait “Selbstbildnis im Pelzrock”, dated 1500.1

The inscription on the left side of the painting says “AD 1500”, the explanation on the right side says “Albertus Durerus Noricus ipsum me propriis sic effingebam coloribus aetatis anno XXVIII” (‘I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg have portrayed myself in appropriate colors at the age of twenty-eight’). This painting is the only one that Dürer painted without having been ordered to do so; he kept it in his studio in Nuremberg throughout his life.2 But in recognizing the artist in this painting, we have seen only a part of it, since the countenance of the artist is overlaid with the countenance of Jesus Christ:

The Self-Portrait of 1500 is the only portrait by Dürer in which the figure is both rigidly frontalized and verticalized. The effect of this hieratic arrangement is paralleled only by half-length images of Christ, and this resemblance is strengthened by the position of the hand which occupies the same place as the blessing right of the Salvator Mundi. It is indeed unquestionable that Dürer deliberately styled himself into the likeness of the Saviour. He not only adopted the compositional scheme of His image, but idealized his own features so as to make them conform to those traditionally attributed to Christ […]. How could so pious and humble an artist as Dürer resort to a procedure which many less religious men would have considered blasphemous?3

Albrecht Dürer: Self-portrait with Fur Collar (1500)

© bpk-Bildagentur – Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

Panofski gives a convincing answer to this question by explaining that Dürer did not really paint himself, but that he painted himself as someone who, as an artist, is “entrusted with a gift which implies both the triumph and the tragedy of the ‘Eritis sicut Deus’. He has to subordinate his private self to an ideal postulate.”4 By stressing the idea of subordination and imitation, Panofsky opts against other possible readings of the painting, which could identify it with the representation of a hybrid individual of the Renaissance era, or the expression of a selfish artist who celebrates himself as a godlike creator.5 Looking at the painting from Panofski’s perspective, we see Albrecht Dürer in devotion, gifted by God as an artist.

What makes this painting so astonishing is the fact that the portrayed Christ-like face looks directly into our eyes; we have the feeling that Jesus Christ (Albrecht Dürer) is looking at us. Researchers have therefore associated this painting with the concept of the visio Dei, the gaze of and at God – a concept prominently discussed by German theologian Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464).6 In his writing De visione Dei (1453), he explores the impact of what it means when God looks at us, and when we, as a result of this first look, are able to look back at him. Towards the end of his essay, it becomes obvious that this look towards God is only possible during our lifetime if we imagine God’s countenance as being the countenance of Jesus Christ. Only through this humanlike face can we indirectly perceive God the father: “[…] for He is the final and entirely perfect Image of God who cannot be multiplied, and there can be but one such supreme Image.”7 At the same time, Cusanus stresses the fact that God’s gaze towards us only becomes imaginable through the features of the face of Jesus Christ who looks at us.

At the beginning of De visione Dei, Cusanus relates this mutual gaze to the famous passage from Saint Paul (1Cor 13,12), when he writes: “Now I behold as in a mirror, in an icon, in a riddle, life eternal, for that is naught other than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest most lovingly to behold me […].”8 Three aspects about this mutual gaze between God and men seem crucial: firstly, the countenance of Jesus Christ serves as the mirror through which we are gazed upon by God and in which we can perceive him. Secondly, if we remember the quotation from Saint Paul in its entirety, we have to admit that the apostle explains to the Corinthians that there is a difference between seeing God today (now) and seeing God once the eschaton arrives (then): “For we see now in a mirror indistinctly, but then face to face. Now I know partially, but then I shall know fully just as God has fully known me.”9 Through his concept of a mystical vision, Cusanus blurs this distinction between the partial knowledge now and the full knowledge then. Thirdly, it becomes clear within the entire writing of Cusanus that this vision of God is considered to be a transforming act.10 Seeing the countenance of God is associated with the idea of knowledge, which includes a process of knowing oneself.11

If this concept of God’s gaze being directed towards us and our gaze looking back at him is the theological background of Dürer’s painting (and I am entirely willing to support this claim), the painting becomes all the more complex. What we then see is not simply Dürer wanting to imitate Jesus Christ, nor him sketching himself as a godlike artistic creator, but we also see Albrecht Dürer’s face having been gazed upon by God looking back at him. This mutual gaze seems to transform the artist in a way which causes his appearance in the painting to take on, to a certain degree, the features of the face of Jesus Christ. This process offers knowledge of God as well as knowledge of oneself.

Through this translation of the possible content of the painting into language, the layering of different aspects within the painting is made visible. Instead of presenting a narration with the aid of various pictures, one behind the other, Dürer presents the different states of the mutual gaze within one painting. Thereby, he creates what makes this work of art so powerful: the direct gaze that addresses the viewer.12

I would like to suggest that by presenting his face in the tradition of the vera ikon, Dürer wants the viewer to have the impression that he himself is looking into a mirror. Through measuring the distance between the two pupils, it can be confirmed that the painting was produced at the scale of 1:1; it is Dürer’s only painting with this scale.13 The artist thereby invites his audience to reenact a religious experience for which he himself claims to be the reference. This coincides with the argument made by Elena Filippi, who writes that Dürer uses his painting, in the mode of first person speech, to encourage his viewers to imitate Jesus Christ.14 He does so by allowing his viewers to experience a gaze that is similar to the gaze that we experience when we look into a mirror, because the face we see stares back at us. At the same time, however, the experience of looking at Self-portrait with Fur Collar is, of course, different from looking into a mirror in that we do not see our own face but the face of someone who resembles Jesus Christ. But to identify and recognize oneself by looking at this other person’s face – to allow the other to become one’s own reflection – is the effort the viewer is encouraged to make. Within the theological framework, this look into the mirror, which furthermore has the features of the face of Jesus Christ, results in opening oneself towards the knowledge of God. Aesthetically, Dürer finds a convincing way of rendering this distant knowledge close by lending Jesus Christ his own features.