The model for Albrecht Dürer's 'Praying hands'

Abstract

The image of 'Praying Hands' by Albrecht Dürer, painted on an altarpiece in the sixteenth century and destroyed by fire in the seventeenth century, has come down to us in the form of a preparatory drawing on blue-grey paper (Fig. 1). The popularity of this image is impressive because of its religious connotations and artistic beauty. The drawing has been the subject of many descriptions and much speculation about the intentions of the artist and the source of the hands he depicts. The present article notes some specific pathological features of these hands and uses computer-assisted tracings to identify their model in an earlier work by the Italian artist Andrea Mantegna.