The peasant couple at market.

Albrecht Dürer probably produced this, his third copper engraving dedicated to a peasant subject, shortly before his journey to the Netherlands (1520-21). The same size and format as the Dancing Peasants and the Bagpiper (both 1514; all roughly 116 x 73 mm), this engraving seems to have served on the journey as a gift for his hosts; he often mentions giving the “new peasant” as a gift. This time, however, the couple are not freestanding, but are positioned in front of a crumbling wall. Dürer inscribed the date between the heads of the couple and his monogram on a stone at their feet. The man, whose chubby cheeks and muscular build indicate that he is still young, stretches out his right arm; his purse is in his left hand, and he is about to say something. The meaning of the engraving is controversial: some authorities (e.g. National Gallery of Victoria) still prefer to call the print The Peasant and his wife at the market, and see the male figure as engaged on selling produce. However, Dürer scholar Jürgen Müller writes in the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, that 'it seems to me to allude to a sexual joke. The old woman holding two dead cocks in her left hand has made a sexual offer to the young man, who now anxiously holds his "money bag". Further, the jug and the egg basket have sexual connotations. The subtext of Dürer’s picture is the theme of the unequal lovers; the brash old woman is juxtaposed in lewd contrast to a timid young man, who makes a gesture of rejection'.

The dates '1512' and '1519' are genuinely confusing, with some sources (e.g. the Royal Collection Trust) favouring the earlier date, but the weight of evidence, particularly in regard to Dürer’s trip to the Netherlands, favours the later date, and this is confirmed by the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Art.

See: Jürgen Müller, 'Albrecht Dürer's Peasant Engravings: A Different Laocoön, or the Birth of Aesthetic Subversion in the Spirit of the Reformation',  http://www.jhna.org/index.php/past-issues/vol-3-1/133-albrecht-duerers-peasant

Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                                         November 2016