Portrait of a Young Woman with Her Hair Down, 1497

About the Work

A companion piece to this piously staged portrait of a woman can be found in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. The latter work shows a second young woman with her hair pinned up, holding plants whose symbolic meaning is clearly erotic. For a long time it was assumed that Dürer had portrayed two members of a patrician dynasty - possibly two sisters, one of whom was destined to become a nun, while the other was about to be married. However, the coat of arms of the Fürleger family, which can be made out in the background, was added at a later date, so that the identity of the two women remains a mystery to this day.