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It is this inventiveness in handling which most distinguishes Duerer from painters like Raphael and Holbein, and makes his work comparable with the masterpieces of Rembrandt and Titian, in spite of the extreme opposition in aspect between their work and his. The vivid Oswolt Krel at Munich shows the peculiarity of Duerer's caligraphic touch better than perhaps any other of his portraits.
In this portrait of his father, Duerer has developed a shaken brushline, admirably adapted to suggest the wrinkled features of an old man, but in complete contrast to the rapid sweep of the caligraphic work in the Oswolt Krel; and it is to be noticed how in both pictures the touch seems to have been invented to facilitate the rendering of the peculiar curves and lines of the sitter's features, and further variations of it developed to express the draperies and other component parts of the picture.
In each the Esthetic problem has been approached and solved in a strikingly different manner. This picture and its fellow, the portrait of the painter at Madrid, the Oswolt Krel, the portrait of a lady seen against the sea at Berlin, the Wolgemut, and Duerer's own portrait at Munich, though seen by the same absorbing eyes, are rendered each in quite a different manner.
It has obvious affinities with the Oswolt Krel, but the caligraphic method is again modified in harmony with the character of the sitter's features. The companion piece, representing Felicitas Tucherin, would seem at some period to have been restored to the insignificance and obscurity that belonged to the sitter before Duerer painted her.
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