Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents (or Dürer's Parents with Rosaries) is the collective name for two late-15th century portrait panels by the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer. They show the artist's parents, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514) and Albrecht Dürer the Elder (c. 1427–1502), when she was around 39 and he was 63 years. The portraits are unflinching records of the physical and emotional effects of ageing. The Dürer family was close, and Dürer may have intended the panels either to display his skill to his parents^[1] or as keepsakes while he travelled soon after as a journeyman painter.

They were created either as pendants, that is conceived as a pair and intended to hang alongside each other,^[2] or diptych wings. However, this formation may have been a later conception; Barbara's portrait seems to have been executed some time after her husband's and it is unusual for a husband to be placed to the viewer's right in paired panels. His father's panel is considered the superior work and has been described as one of Dürer's most exact and honest portraits.^[3] They are among four paintings or drawings Dürer made of his parents,^{[upper-alpha 1]} each of which unsentimentally examines the deteriorating effects of age. His later writings contain eulogies for both parents, from which the love and respect he felt toward them are evident.

Each panel measured 47.5 cm x 39.5 cm (18.7 in x 15.6 in), but the left hand panel has been cut down. They have been separated since at least 1628, until Barbara's portrait—long considered lost—was reattributed in 1977.^{[upper-alpha 2]} The panels were reunited in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum's 2012 exhibition "The Early Dürer".^[7]

The three-quarter view was widely used in southern German portraiture of the late-15th century. Rosary beads were often included to indicate the piety and modesty of the sitters, although by the 16th century religious motifs and sentiments like this were falling out of fashion. Dürer distinguishes himself from his contemporaries through his tight and detailed focus on his parents' faces, a technique that draws comparison to the work of the first generation of Early Netherlandish painters active 50 years earlier. Albrecht the Elder had travelled to Flanders and from working with Netherlandish artists had acquired a strong appreciation for the work of both Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden.^[8] That he passed on this influence to his son is evident from the early use of silverpoint, a medium which according to Erwin Panofsky requires "an exceptional degree of confidence, accuracy and sensitive feeling for its successful handling".^[9]

Dürer would have been aware of Hans Pleydenwurff's portrait of the ageing Count Georg von Lowenstein, through his teacher Michael Wolgemut. Pleydenwurff's portrait was in turn likely influenced by van Eyck's 1438 Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati.^[10][11] Juliane von Fircks [de] believes the portrait of Dürer's father took from Pleydenwurff's portrait, which she describes as a "highly detailed representation of [a] white haired old man, who defies the pains of growing old with an alert mind and an inner animation".^[10]

Von Fircks notes that Dürer's 1484 self-portrait was created with the use of a mirror while his most iconic work is a self-portrait; the 1500 Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight. From these she concludes that the "accurate observation and documentary recording" of both his own and his parents' appearances over time was not just a compulsion, but that is indicative of a deeper interest in the effects of time and age on human appearance.^[10] Although Dürer was fascinated by the effects of ageing on others, he seems to have had some hesitancy at examining how it might affect him personally. The self-portraits tend to be idealised and the 1500 portrait was his last. Later self-portraits are far more understated and executed in a 'secondary' media, such as his drawings of the Man of Sorrows and nude drawing of 1505, which depicted an emaciated body during the time of the plague.^[3]

Albrecht the Elder was 62 or 63^{[upper-alpha 3]} when his panel was painted early in 1490. Barbara's portrait may have been completed soon after, when she would have been around 39. Their son was around 18 and had just completed his apprenticeship with Michael Wolgemut, and would soon leave for Nuremberg to travel as a journeyman painter. The father panel was painted first; for aesthetic reasons Dürer may have waited a year or two until his mother looked older.^[13]

The sitters are presented in three-quarter view before flat, nondescript lacquer-like green backgrounds, which although lushly coloured, are thinly layered.^[14] Each has a white ground and light red imprimatura with lead content.^[15] The sitter's form and pose echo and in many ways counterbalance each other.^[16] Brand Philip draws attention to the similarities of the panels' linear construction, especially the manner in which the folds and lines of their clothing form triangular shapes. The train of Barbara's headdress across her chest corresponds with the opening of Albrecht's fur-lined coat.^[13] It was more usual in pendant portraits of this type for the male to be on the left-hand side; the positioning here may be an indication that Dürer originally intended his father's panel to stand alone, given that Barbara's was painted some time later.^[7]

Albrecht the Elder's panel is regarded as the superior of the two works. This may in part be attributed to differing contemporary treatments of male and female portraits; men were allowed more individuality, while female portraits were bound by stereotypes and were not as daring, for example showing evidence of ageing. In either case, the father painting is far more closely detailed, especially in the lining of clothing, which is summary in Barbara's panel, compared to the long seam of her husband's gown. This contrast in detail can also be seen in the treatment of the rosaries, which are given prominence and a glowing red colour in his panel, but are small and relegated in hers.^[17]

Albrecht the Elder's panel is usually, but not always, thought to be the first of the two to be executed and, if so, is the earliest extant example of his son's painting. In contrast, a number of art historians have noted that his mother's portrait contains bland passages, especially around the eyes and may be a near-contemporary copy of a lost original.^[18] Lotte Brand Philip believes the clumsiness in the mother panel indicated that Dürer painted it first, as a youthful attempt at portraiture, and that Albrecht the Elder might have later "commissioned" his own portrait to pair with Barbara's.^[19] Recent technical examination of the two panels confirms that Barbara's portrait was painted later than her husband's.^[17]

After the painter's death in 1528, the portraits were held by his brother, and then his brother's widow before they passed into the collection of Willibald Imhoff, a grandson of Dürer's friend Willibald Pirckheimer. Inventories from the Imhoff collection from 1573 to 1574, 1580 and 1588 list both panels. The next surviving Imhoff inventory, of 1628, again lists the mother's portrait, but it disappears after a mention in the 1633–58 account books of Hans Hieronymus Imhoff, after which its whereabouts became unknown.^[42] Dürer expert Matthias Mende described the missing portrait of Barbara Holper as "among the most severe losses in the Dürer oeuvre".^[43]

In 1977, art historian Lotte Brand Philip proposed that Unknown Woman in a Coif, held by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, was the original portrait of Barbara Holper. The Nuremberg panel was previously thought to have originated from a member of Wolgemut's workshop, a Franconian artist in his circle, or the anonymous Mainz painter Master W. B.^[22] Brand Philip's attribution was based on striking similarities in composition and its shared tone, theme, and size with the father panel at the Uffizi. In both works the sitters are holding rosary beads, and Dürer attentively describes their hands. Both portraits show the sitter in the same pose, against a similarly coloured background.^[44] Both are lit from the upper left. The boards are identically cut in width and depth, although 3 cm was removed from the left edge of Barbara's panel.^[43] Brand Philip noted the similarities between the panel and Dürer's 1514 charcoal drawing Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63.^[21] Fedja Anzelewsky agreed with the attribution, noting that both portraits bear, on their reverse, the catalogue number recorded in the Imhoff inventories, as well as "precisely the same design of masses of dark clouds".^[24]

Anzelewsky speculated that the father's portrait, which was not listed in the 1628 Imhoff inventory, had been broken off and sold to Rudolph II of Austria.^[15] Hans Hieronymus Imhoff's lukewarm description of Barbara's portrait—"the mother of Albrecht Dürer in oil colors on wood, [but] there are many who do not believe it to be a work of Dürer"—led Brand Philip to conclude that Albrecht's panel was likely sold individually as the more accomplished and marketable of the two.^[45] The attribution is widely accepted today. In 2013 Stephan Kemperdick noted the sophistication of the Nuremberg portrait and that its three-dimensional modeling of the head displays a level of skill beyond Wolgemut and his circle.^[17]

The two panels were reunited in 2012 during a Dürer exhibition in Nuremberg having been separated since sometime between 1588 and 1628.^[7]

• List of paintings by Albrecht Dürer