Whose portraits are described as unflinching records of the effects of ageing?
Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents (or Dürer's Parents with Rosaries) is the collective name for two late-15th century portrait panels by the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer. They show the artist's parents, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514) and Albrecht Dürer the Elder (c. 1427–1502), when she was around 39 and he was 63 years. The portraits are unflinching records of the physical and emotional effects of ageing. The Dürer family was close and Dürer may have intended the panels either to display his skill to his parents or as keepsakes while he travelled soon after as a journeyman painter.
They were created either as pendants, that is conceived as a pair and intended to hang alongside each other, or diptych wings. However this formation may have been a later conception; Barbara's portrait seems to have been executed some time after her husband's and it is unusual for a husband to be placed to the viewer's right in paired panels. His father's panel is considered the superior work and has been described as one of Dürer's most exact and honest portraits. They are among four paintings or drawings Dürer made of his parents, each of which unsentimentally examines the deteriorating effects of age. His later writings contain eulogies for both parents, from which the love and respect he felt toward them is evident.
Each panel measured 47.5 cm x 39.5 cm (18.7 in x 15.6 in), but the left hand panel has been cut down. They have been separated since at least 1628, until Barbara's portrait—long considered lost—was reattributed in 1977. The panels were reunited in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum's 2012 exhibition "The Early Dürer".
Barbara Holper Albrecht Dürer the Elder