Progeria

Albrecht Dürer
21 May 1471, Nuremberg – 6 April 1528, Nuremberg, Germany

This painting is the last work Dürer ever produced.
It reflects Dürer’s curiosity in portraying the unusual.

♦ Child with a long beard (1527) ♦

♦ Diagnosis
Key features: juvenile appearance, grey hair and a beard
Additional features: child with fine skin texture
Clinical features: progeria?

♦ Definition: progeria
Premature senility: a clinical condition characterised by symptoms of both infantilism and senility. This premature ageing may be due to an extreme degree of arteriosclerosis.

♦ Discussion
A child with grey hair and a beard.
One might suspect a clinical diagnosis of premature ageing (progeria), were it not for the fact that the child has such a fine skin texture. If this child really did suffer from progeria, one would also expect to see signs of ageing on the skin, which is clearly not the case here.

Excessive hair growth (hypertrichosis) is also unlikely, although it does occur in children as a congenital abnormality in the development of the embryo’s outer germ layer (ectodermal dysplasia).
This unusual work by Albrecht Dürer, who usually produces realistic depictions, is difficult to interpret.
It could, of course, be an allegorical representation of Paedogeron, the puer-senex, who symbolises both a child and an old man in a single figure.

Source: Jan Dequeker

Progeria

References