Lot Essay
Drer's watercolour of the Three Turks (British Museum) provided a model for the figures in this composition. This was copied in turn from a painting by Gentile Bellini that the artist would have seen when first in Venice in 1494. In the etching Drer gives one of the Turks a beard and his features seem to resemble that of the artist's own. A silverpoint sketch, probably executed a year before the etching, entitled Kirchehrenbach near Forchheim (Boymans van Beuningen Museum Rotterdam) was the basis for the landscape.