Barbara Straub
by PLATTNER, Hans, Oil on linden panel, 49 x 36 cm
This painting is the right part of a portrait diptych representing Hans and Barbara Straub. Hans Straub was the son of a wealthy merchant in Nuremberg. He married Barbara Pirckheimer, daughter of Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), a German Renaissance lawyer, author and humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, and a member of the governing City Council for two periods. He was the closest friend of the artist Albrecht D�rer, who made a number of portraits of him, and a close friend of the great humanist and theologian Erasmus.
The hat in the female portrait exemplify the type of headdress that in the 1520s replaced the bonnet among patrician women of Nuremberg.