''Portrait of Johann Kleberger'' is a 1526 oil on limewood panel painting by

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...

, signed and dated by the artist and now in

Kunsthistorisches Museum The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal do ...

in Vienna. Costantino Porcu (eds), ''Dürer'', Rizzoli, Milan, 2004 The work was produced in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

the same year as he produced his portraits of Hieronymus Holzschuher and Jakob Muffel. Kleberger was a rich merchant and financier who had married the widowed daughter of Dürer's close friend

Willibald Pirckheimer Willibald Pirckheimer (5 December 1470 – 22 December 1530) was a German Renaissance lawyer, author and Renaissance humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, imperial counsellor and a member of the governing City ...

. On its subject's death the work passed to his stepson Willibal Imhof, who then sold it to

Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the Hous ...

. Painted in the format of a classical medal, possibly inspired by

Hans Burgkmair Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531) was a German Painting, painter and woodcut printmaker. Background Hans Burgkmair was born in Augsburg, the son of painter Thomas Burgkmair. His own son, Hans the Younger, later became a painter as well. From ...

's engravings of Roman medals, the artist shows his subject as a sculpture-like bust in a medallion in a circular gap in a ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' wall. Inside the circle is the inscription E. IOANI KLEBERGERS NORIKER UN AETA SVAE XXXX, with heraldic motifs in three of the corners and the date 1526 and the artist's monogram in the fourth corner.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Portrait of Johann Kleberger 1526 paintings Portraits of men Kleberger Paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum

See also

References