"mein Agnes"

When D�rer finally returned to Nuremberg in May 1494 he was 23, fully-trained and could open his own workshop. Albrecht the Elder had felt it was time for his son to marry and had chosen a wife during his long absence. On 7 July, just a few weeks after his return, D�rer was married to Agnes Frey, the daughter of the skilled and prosperous coppersmith Hans Frey and his wife Anna Rummel. It was probably just before their wedding that D�rer sketched his fianc�e, then in her late teens. Capturing her pensive mood with just a few strokes of the pen, D�rer lovingly inscribed it: `My Agnes’.

Agnes, who still appears girlish, even childlike, here, is sitting at a table and supporting her head pensively on her right hand, her hair tied back. The intimacy of this everyday sketch is unusual, showing the depicted woman at a moment when she evidently thought herself to be unobserved.