Zelfportret (Self-Portrait)

Set apart from every surreal world, a sober Old Master self-portrait. A young man with long silver-grey hair and a fine moustache, a circlet of leaves at his brow, wrapped in a deep red mantle against a near-black ground. The pose is a deliberate echo of Albrecht Dürer, who in 1500 painted himself face-on like a sacred icon, claiming for the artist the dignity once reserved for saints and kings. Stripped of every mask and menagerie, this is the maker stepping out from behind his own dreamworlds to meet your eye, and the single laurel leaf is the only boast he permits himself, the quiet pride of a vocation.