The Ill-Assorted Couple (or “The Promise of Love”)

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An original Albrecht Dürer engraving.

1495

Original engraving printed in black ink on laid paper.

Signed in the plate with the artist’s monogram lower center.

A superb 16th century/lifetime Meder “b-c” (of “e”) impression of the first state of three, with the diagonal lines above the distant mountain still printing clearly, printed circa 1500-14.

Catalog: Bartsch 93; Dodgson 5; Meder 77 I.b-c/III; Panofsky 200; Strauss 5; Schoch/Mende/Scherbaum 3.

The style of the monogram indicates that this is one of Dürer’s earliest engravings.

The “unequal couple” has been a common motif in moralizing literary satire since antiquity, and became an especially favored profane subject in the realm of the “Garden of Love” in the print production of the final quarter of the 15th century. Like the Housebook Master just a few years earlier, Dürer combines the motif of foolish old age with the theme of purchasable love: while the young woman has already opened her purse, and is ready to receive remuneration for her favors, the old man searches in his own for a suitable coin. Of particular interest is the fact that the object of his affections is clearly not single, since she wears the decorative bonnet of a married citizen of Nuremberg. In this regard, Dürer extends the motif to involve an additional aspect, that of adultery. The horse at the right-hand edge of the composition may then be more than a narrative element, i.e. a reference to the circumstance that the elderly fellow has passed to the town gates in order to arrive at his assignation. Tethered to an erect, somewhat phallic stump of a branch, and rubbing with evident pleasure against the tree trunk, it involves – according to Talbot – a deliberate reference to a metaphor from Jeremiah: They were as fed horses in the morning: everyone neighed after his neighbor’s wife (Jeremiah 5:8).