Self-portrait, Study of a Hand and a Pillow (recto); Six Studies of Pillows (verso) 1493 Albrecht Dürer German Among the masterpieces of European draftsmanship, this iconic self-portrait study evokes the awakening artistic consciousness of the twenty-two-year-old German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Probably produced with the aid of a mirror, the head and the hand were preparatory for his painted Self-Portrait of 1493 (Musée du Louvre, Paris), considered one of the earliest independent self-portraits in Western painting. Durers exploration of self-portraiture in several drawings and paintings is characterized by an arresting directness that was highly unusual at the time. The artists calligraphic precision and expressiveness of line is also found in the study of a pillow at the bottom of the sheet, a subject that he continued to explore on the reverse. 　On the reverse of the sheet (dated 1493 by the artist), Dürer made a series of sketches of pillows, exploring the effects of li