The first paintings of Durer are distinguished by a certain rigidity of a picturesque manner. They are dominated by a graphic, fractional drawing, clear, cold local tones, clearly separated from one another, somewhat dry manner of a careful, smoothed letter. The year 1500 turns out to be a turning point in Durer’s work.
Passionately seeking the truth from the first creative steps in art, he now comes to the consciousness of the need to find those laws according to which impressions of nature must be translated into artistic images. An external reason for the research that he started was the meeting with the Italian artist Jacopo de Barbari, who had shown him a scientifically constructed image of the human body, that had taken place about this time and made an irresistible impression on him. Durer is eagerly seizing upon the information reported to him.