[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl_ "I, Albert Dürer of Nuremberg, painted my own portrait here in the proper colours at the age of twenty-eight" Oil-painting. Alt Pinakothek, Munich] He suggests that the colour was once bright and varied, and that by varnish and glazes it has been reduced to its present harmonious condition. The hair is certainly much darker than the other portraits would have led one to expect, and the almost walnut brown of the general colour scheme is unique in Dürer's work. However, if some such transmogrification has been effected, it is marvellous that it should have obliterated so little of the inimitable handiwork of the master. Thausing considered the date (1500), monogram and inscription on the back to be forgeries, and it certainly looks as if it ought to come nearer to the portrait in the _Feast of the Rose Garlands_ (1506) than to that at Madrid (1498). A genuine scalloped tablet is faintly visible under the dark glazes which cover the background; and this, no doubt, bears the original inscription and date. What may not have happened to a picture after or before it left the artist's studio? Critics are too quick to determine that such changes have been introduced by others. In this case we must remember how experimental Dürer was, even with regard to his engravings on metal. He tries iron plates and etching, and finally settles on a method of commencing with etching and finishing with the burin; and this was in a medium in which he soon found himself at home. But with painting he was vastly more experimental, and never satisfied with his results, as he told Melanchthon (see p. 187). Then we must remember that this picture probably was during Dürer's lifetime, if not in his own possession, at least never out of his reach; and no doubt he was aware that it was the grandest and most perfectly finished of all his portraits--therefore, as he came more and more, especially after his visit to the Netherlands, to desire and seek after simplicity, he may himself have added the dark glazes. If the original inscription contained a dedication to Pirkheimer or some other notable Nuremberger, there was every reason for the artist who stole the picture to obliterate this and add a new one: or this may have been done when it became the property of the town, for those who sold it may have wished that it should not be known that it might have been an heirloom in their family. Infinite are the possibilities, those only decide in such cases who have a personal motive for doing so; "la rage de conclure" (as Flaubert saw) is the pitfall of those who are vain of their knowledge. [Illustration: OSWOLT KREL Oil portrait in the Alt Pinakothek at Munich] [Illustration: _By permission_ of the "_Burlington_ Magazine" ALBERT DÜRER THE ELDER, 1497 National Gallery] III