Silverpoint is a traditional drawing technique and tool first used by medieval scribes on manuscripts.
Portrait Study of Dorothea Meyer, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1516. Silverpoint, red chalk, and traces of black pencil on white-coated paper, Kunstmuseum Basel.
Medieval stylus
Artist's Wife, Edith Holman Hunt by William Holman Hunt, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Birmingham Museum of Art.
A 1789 portrait of Mozart in silverpoint by Doris Stock
Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.
Dürer's Self-portrait at 26 at Prado Museum
Self-portrait silverpoint drawing by the thirteen-year-old Dürer, 1484. Albertina, Vienna.
The earliest painted Self-Portrait (1493) by Albrecht Dürer, oil, originally on vellum (Louvre, Paris)
Dürer's sketch of his wife Agnes Frey (1494)