In 1497 Dürer painted the excellent portrait of his father, which the Rath of Nuremberg presented to Charles I. of England, and which is now at Sion House, the seat of the Earl of Northumberland. It shows a man aged yet strong, with grave and anxious eyes, compressed lips, and an earnest expression. Another similar portrait of the same date is in the Munich Pinakothek. He also executed two portraits of the pretty patrician damsel, Catherine Fürleger; one as a loose-haired Magdalen (which is now in London), and the other as a German lady (now at Frankfort). In 1498 Dürer painted a handsome portrait of himself, with curly hair and beard, and a rich holiday costume. His expression is that of a man who appreciates and delights in his own value, and is thoroughly self-complacent. This picture was presented by Nuremberg to King Charles I. of England; and, in the dispersion of his gallery during the Commonwealth, it was bought by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery, though Mündler calls this Florentine picture a copy of a nobler original which is in the Madrid Gallery. During this year Dürer published his first great series of woodcuts, representing the Apocalypse of St. John, in fifteen pictures full of terrible impressiveness and the naturalistic quaintness of early German faith. The boldness of the youth who thus took for his theme the marvellous mysteries of Patmos was warranted in the grand weirdness and perennial fascination of the resulting compositions. This series of rich and skilful engravings marked a new era in the history of wood-engraving, and the entrance of a noble artistic spirit into a realm which had previously been occupied by rude monkish cuts of saints and miracles. Jackson calls these representations of the Apocalypse "much superior to all wood-engravings that had previously appeared, both in design and execution." The series was brought out simultaneously in German and Latin editions, and was published by the author himself. It met with a great success, and was soon duplicated in new pirated editions.