Philipp Melanchthon.

Albrecht Dürer.
Philipp Melanchthon.
Engraving. Nuremberg, 1526. (BRA0255)

A friend of Dürer’s since 1518, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) was Germany’s leading scholar of biblical languages and Luther’s most important colleague in the promotion of his theological reforms. In 1526, the great Wittenberg reformer was living in Nuremberg at the home of Dürer’s friend, Wilibald Pirckheimer. He sat for a portrait drawing that Dürer converted into this engraving, the earliest of all known portraits of Melanchthon. The Latin inscription below translates: “Dürer was able to depict Philipp as if living, but even his studied hand could not render the man’s mind.”