Collection/1500s

Praying Hands by Albrecht Dürer

Two hands pressed together in prayer, drawn in gray and white on blue paper. Dürer drew them in 1508 as a study for an apostle in an altarpiece. The altarpiece was destroyed by fire in 1729; the drawing survived.

It became one of the most reproduced images in the world. The story of a brother who sacrificed his career for Dürer is a later legend.