Studies of Dürer’s Left Hand

Three hands occupy this narrow sheet, each apparently ready to do something different. One delicately holds a flower, another closes around its protruding thumb, and a third raises a pointing finger. Dürer makes the change of gesture feel like a change of voice. The drawing, now in the ALBERTINA in Vienna, is dated 1493/94 and measures 27 × 18 centimetres. Its medium is pen in brown and black-brown ink. ^[1]

Three gestures on one sheet

The largest study rises along the left edge. We see the back of the hand, its long fingers opening above a narrow wrist. Thumb and fingertip approach each other with the care needed to grip something slender; the other fingers bend and separate at different angles. The flower and its curling stem are so lightly indicated that the hand remains the principal subject. Dürer gives weight to the flesh beneath the thumb and to the ridges above the wrist. Against those darker passages, the broad, comparatively empty area across the back of the hand catches the light.

At the upper right, the hand contracts. Bent fingers overlap in a compact knot, with the thumb inserted between them. This is the fig gesture, identified by the ALBERTINA as a coarse sign with a long history. Its tightly packed curves make a strong visual answer to the more open fingers on the left. The ends of the fingers turn towards us, while the wrist narrows below. A few strokes suggest the surrounding cuff, then stop, leaving the enclosed, shaded hand suspended above a much looser outline. ^[1]

The lower hand redirects the movement upwards. Its extended forefinger rises towards the space beneath the fist, while the remaining fingers curl across the palm. The thumb opens to the left, creating a second, shorter projection. Especially clear here is Dürer’s attention to the way one finger covers another: the shadows deepen in the small intervals between them, and the fingertip contours remain distinct even where several rounded forms crowd together. The pointing finger has a relatively light interior, crossed by small marks around its joints. It feels extended because the rest of the hand is so firmly gathered beneath it.

The three studies have no common setting. Their sleeves enter at different places, and their hands are viewed from different sides. Yet the sheet has a strong internal balance. The long arm on the left supplies a continuous upward movement; the two smaller hands occupy the space beside it. Broad empty passages around the upper fist prevent its dark fingers from becoming confused with the adjacent studies. Below, the pointed finger leads the eye back into the page. Looking from one hand to another becomes an exercise in comparing expansion, compression and direction.

How the pen makes flesh

Enlarge the drawing and its apparently smooth modelling breaks into many separate decisions. Short curved strokes wrap around the fingers. In the deepest recesses, lines cross or accumulate closely enough to form dark pockets. Across a knuckle or the broad surface of the wrist, they spread apart. The paper supplies the light between them. Dürer can therefore move from a hard edge to a rounded surface without surrounding every part with an equally heavy contour.

The clothes invite a different rhythm. Along the large left sleeve, long, relatively straight lines descend towards the bottom edge. Around the cuff they turn into loops, crossed bands and curling folds. The sleeve below the pointing hand is more abruptly abbreviated, with small repeated marks around its opening and loose indications further down. These changes make cloth and skin feel different even though both are described with a pen. The drawing rewards looking at the transition between them: a wrist emerges from an opening whose wavering outline gives it room to move.

That variety is easy to miss if the sheet is treated only as a test of anatomical correctness. A bent finger presents a short, foreshortened surface; a thumb partly enclosed by other fingers can look unexpectedly small or displaced. Here the complicated overlaps are the subject of sustained attention. Differences in finish also matter. A loose cuff beside a carefully shaded finger does not by itself establish that the artist lost interest, made a mistake, or added the finger later. The visible contrast lets us see where he concentrated his effort.

A self-portrait without a face

The identification of these as Dürer’s own left hand rests on comparison with his early self-portrait drawings. A companion is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s sheet combining a face, a hand and a pillow. In his 1999 catalogue discussion, Fritz Koreny connects the Vienna studies closely with that drawing. He notes the resemblance of the flower-holding hand, seen from the other side, and compares the wrist and sleeve of the pointing study. His suggestion that the sheets were made at nearly the same time is an argument from their drawing, rather than a recorded account of a sitting. ^{[1] [12]}

In the New York sheet, the hand rises beside the artist’s face. Its open arrangement of thumb and fingers resembles the more expansive gesture at the left of the Vienna drawing. Seeing the two together makes self-observation a practical activity: the artist has a model that he can inspect, turn and pose. Stijn Alsteens’s 2012 catalogue entry distinguishes the use of a mirror for Dürer’s face from direct observation of his left hand. The date 1493, written by Dürer on the reverse of the New York sheet, supplies a firm chronological point for the comparison. ^[13]

The Vienna drawing removes the face and gives the hand three opportunities to act. That change has a striking consequence for the viewer. Without a sitter’s expression, we read the fingers and wrist more attentively. The flower-holding pose is delicate, the fist compact and emphatic, the pointing hand insistent. These responses arise partly from the forms themselves. Identifying a particular historical message requires more: a setting, an accompanying figure, an object or a text. A pointing finger on an isolated study sheet has no named person or thing towards which it must direct us.

Dating by comparison also leaves room for disagreement. The ALBERTINA’s published discussion records proposals ranging from 1493 to 1494/95, based partly on the handling of the sleeves and the relative finish of related drawings. Its current heading uses 1493/94. Koreny’s discussion is useful because it recognises that drawings made close together can have very different degrees of freedom and detail. A rapidly indicated sleeve cannot supply a reliable calendar on its own. ^{[1] [12]}

The flower and the painted self-portrait

The flower leads towards Dürer’s painted self-portrait of 1493 in the Louvre. There he appears in elaborate clothing and holds a sprig of eryngium, often called a thistle. The Louvre describes the picture as a possible betrothal portrait; within that interpretation, the plant would signify marital fidelity. Alsteens proposes that the flower-holding hand on the Vienna sheet may belong to the same preparatory context. That possibility makes the drawing more closely connected with the young artist’s public appearance, although a direct transfer from this particular hand study to the painting has not been demonstrated. ^{[14] [13]}

The visual difference is substantial. On the study sheet, the flower is a slight accompaniment to the fingers. In the painting, its branching stem crosses the dark clothing and belongs to a complete presentation of the artist, alongside his costume, face and inscription. The hands have been brought down in front of his body. What was isolated for close inspection has become one part of an organised portrait. The comparison shows how a hand can carry both a physical task—holding a fragile stem—and a possible social meaning.

Koreny places such poses within the wider tradition of young men presenting themselves with flowers in portraiture. This gives the proposed connection a historical setting. It also keeps the flower distinct from the other two gestures. There is no accompanying narrative on the Vienna sheet that turns the flower, the fist and the pointing finger into successive episodes of a courtship. Their coexistence gives Dürer a range of expressive possibilities. The drawing permits comparison between those possibilities without requiring a single story to unite them. ^[12]

What the ink can tell us

Scientific examination adds another kind of evidence. A research project by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum and Berlin’s Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung investigated the inks of Dürer’s early drawings. Its entry for this sheet reports a very consistent iron gall ink at four measured points on the hand-study side. A fifth measurement on the reverse produced a closely similar, perhaps identical, result. This finding matters because differences of darkness and handling need not mean that Dürer changed to a different ink for each passage. ^[15]

The reverse contains studies of heads and feet, so the three hands belong to a sheet used on both sides. Similar ink on the two faces supports their material relationship; it does not tell us the exact interval between drawing sessions or prove the identities proposed for the heads. The ALBERTINA records no watermark or collector’s stamp. Together, these details explain why the drawing’s history depends on several kinds of evidence: the surviving marks, comparison with related works, material examination and later records of ownership. ^{[15] [1]}

A later arrival in Vienna

This sheet entered the ALBERTINA in 1932 through an exchange of duplicates, arranged through the Viennese dealer Max Hevesi and the antiquarian firm Gilhofer and Ranschburg. Earlier imperial ownership is recorded with qualifications, and the museum places it in Polish aristocratic possession around or after 1796. Its collecting history therefore needs to be followed individually. ^[1]

The appeal of the sheet survives its movement from working material to a museum collection. Each gesture remains legible at a glance, while the small pen marks continue to demand a slower look. The fingertip touching a stem, the thumb caught among bent fingers and the raised forefinger all show how much expressive difference can arise from a few changes in position. Dürer gives those changes enough physical detail that we can almost feel ourselves making them.