Praying Hands
Albrecht Dürer
ALBRECHT DÜRER, c.1508. PEN-AND-INK ON PAPER.
Two hands gently pressed together in prayer, sketched as either preparation or posterity, have travelled the world over half a millennia. They have ended up on the tombstone of Andy Warhol, tattooed on thousands of bodies, recreated in endless variation and reproduced on every medium imaginable. Albrecht Dürer’s humble drawing has become, since it was created in the early 1500s, one of the most significant and iconic images of faith in the western world. It is because of this that various myths and stories as to its origin have sprung up over the years, each trying to find some contextual poetry in its creation that justifies its fame and acclaim. Yet the truth is more simple; the hands were painted as either a study for, or a record of, a detail in Dürer’s Heller Altarpiece. Immaculately rendered on precious blue paper there is no doubt Dürer was proud of the work, but their beauty does not come from a grand backstory or a tragic tale, simply from the devotion of an artist trying to capture the flesh and bones of faith in ink and paper.