Albrecht Dürer

This is one of three engravings from the same few years that historians consider his best — what it actually means has apparently been argued over for centuries.

This one's grouped with two other Dürer engravings as his 'Master Prints,' from what I've read — three prints meant to show off everything the medium could do.

From what I've read, drawings like this are considered too fragile for gallery light, so the original only comes out on display now and then.

Nobody has ever agreed on what this is about, which hasn't stopped four hundred years of people having a go. The grid on the wall is a magic square — every row and column adds up to the same number, and the date's worked into the bottom row. It was apparently printed around the same time as two others that get treated as a matching set.

They say this kind of fine dress and direct stare was normally reserved for nobility — here it's just a painter claiming it for himself.

This wasn't his first attempt at the subject, from what I can tell — he'd already made a widely copied engraving of the same scene a few years earlier, and this panel pair reworks it in paint. That little tag hanging from the branch is apparently his own signature, tucked right into the scene.