File:Albrecht Dürer - Hans Tucher - WGA06929.jpg

(b. 1471, Nürnberg, d. 1528, Nürnberg)

Hans Tucher 1499 Oil on panel, 28 x 24 cm Schlossmuseum, Weimar

The panel is the left side of a diptych that includes the portrait of his wife Felicitas. Inscription in the top left in another's hand: HANS TUCHER, 42 IERIG 1499. In 1824, the two portraits were included in the inventory of the museum in the Jägerhaus of Weimar. After 1918, they were passed from the grand dukes to the museum.

It was commissioned in the same year as the diptych of Nicolas and Elsbeth Tucher (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel). They had approximately the same composition because Wolgemut, Dürer's master, had already done portraits of the members of the Tucher family years before. Even the setting of the portraits is very similar. The presence of an embroidered curtain in the background, the almost identical landscape passage seen through the windows, and lastly, the windowsill set equal spatial limits to the portraits. The foreshortenings of the landscape passage are imaginative and mannered, showing roads, lakes, and mountains. On the road, in the landscape behind the man's portrait, one discerns a wayfarer; on the path, in the woman's portrait, a man on horseback. The same clouds are seen in the clear sky behind the man, as in the wife's portrait, and in Elsbeth Tucher's.

Hans Tucher, a descendant of an old Nuremberg family and an important member of the city council, is depicted in lavish clothes, with a fur collar, a symbol of his high-ranking position. The head, portrayed in a more elevated position than that of his consort, is framed by soft and wavy hair. The eyes, which have slightly different size, have an open gaze, the eyelids are somewhat lowered, the nose is long and sharp, the lips thin: the result is a proud but winning look, which is also emphasized by the points of the beret folded to the back and front. Besides the ring he wears on his thumb, he holds - like Elsbeth Tucher in her portrait - another ring, gold, in his hand as evidence of his marriage, contracted in 1482 with Felicitas. She, in turn, holds a carnation, with a bud and a flower. Her plump face is turned to the left, but her gaze, with slightly melancholic eyes, looks to the right. Like her sister-in-law, she wears a gold chain around her neck, and the waistcoat, according to custom, is held by a buckle , which is engraved with the initials of her consort, H. T.

The combined coat of arms of Tucher-Rieter is depicted on the verso of the Hans Tucher portrait, which became the anterior side of the closed diptych.

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Author: DÜRER, Albrecht Title: Hans Tucher Time-line: 1501-1550 School: German Form: painting