Painted by Albrecht Durer in 1506 in Venice, The Feast of the Rose Garlands (Fig. 1) is, despite its fragmentary state of preservation, one of the most important paintings in the artist's oeuvre.' It is also a very significant work of the European renaissance - not least because it was born of the conjunction of two different artistic traditions: those of Germany (or rather Nuremberg) and of Venice. Thanks to the felicitous symbiosis of these two worlds, Durer created a work which won high regard in Europe and was acquired by the famous patron and collector Emperor Rudolf II in 1606.

Durer produced a remarkable number of remarkable self- portraits. Apart from the dozen or so drawings and painted images of himself incorporated into other compositions, three autonomous paintings have been preserved. The earliest, now in the Louvre, is not signed, but clearly presents Dtirer's own features (Fig.20). It is inscribed with a date of 1493, as well as a text reading: My sach die gat, als es oben schtat, which literally means: 'My affairs go, as it stands above' (Fig. 19).