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JAKUB POKORA
Warszawa, Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego
Manus Durerr.
The role of gesture in Albrecht Diirer s self-portrait of 1500

Diirer’s self portrait of 1500 (Alte Pi-
nakothek, Munich) is one of the
most widely known images of its
kind (ill.I).1 It remains to this very day an
object of exceptional interest, the reason for
this being it is a Christomorphic ‘image’.
The painter depicted himself through direct
reference to the iconography of Jesus
Christ. Some authors would present here
the Pantocrator, others the Salvator Mundi
or the Vera icon. The extraordinary way of
self-presentation has been commented
upon in various ways, from sacrilege at one
extreme to proof of extreme godliness at
the other; as a picture of God superimposed
upon a human being (‘So God created man
in his own image, in the image of God
created he him.' Gen. 1,27), or as allusion
to imitatio Christi. Diirer was familiar with
Thomas a Kempis’ Imitatio Christi, the
first printed edition of which came out in
Nuremburg in 1493. Thereafter, others
drew the concept of this image from the
Renaissance ideal of the artist - demiurge.2


1. Albrecht Diirer, Self-portrait, 1500,
Munich, Alte Pinakothek

1 A decisive encouragement to publishing my thoughts came from reading an article by prof. Grażyna JURKOWLA-
NIEC, Faith, Paragone and Commemoration in Diirer s ‘Christomorphic ’ Self-Portrait of1500, [in:] Faith and Fanta-
sy in the Renaissance. Texts, Images and Religious Practices, ed. O. Z. PUGLIESE and E. M. KAVALER, Toronto,
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies 2009, pp. 209-228. I wish to graciously thank the author for her
exceptional kindness in providing me with a print-out of the text prior to its publication, from which version of the
subsequent publication reference to specific parts of this study is based.
2 A rich list of sources focusing on the Diirer self-portrait is provided by JURKOWLANIEC, op. cit., pp. 255-261. What
references in my own article on the same subject have been made by myself are additional to those cited by this author.