The similarities with the conventions of religious painting include the manner in which the artist raises his hands to the middle of his chest as if in the act of blessing, while his direct gaze and the sober and earthy tones are clearly invoking Christ.

It is half-length, frontal and highly symmetrical; its lack of a conventional background seemingly presents Dürer without regard to time or place.

The placement of the inscriptions in the dark fields on either side of Dürer are presented as if floating in space, emphasizing that the portrait has a highly symbolic meaning.

In Italy, the conventional fashion for profile portraits was coming to an end, but being replaced with the three-quarters view which had been the accepted pose in Northern Europe since about 1420, and which Dürer used in his earlier self-portraits.

[5] The portrait therefore commemorates a turning point in the artist's life and in the millennium: the year 1500, displayed in the centre of the upper left background field, is here celebrated as epochal.

The painting may have been created as part of a celebration of the saeculum by the circle of the Renaissance humanist scholar Conrad Celtes,[6] which included Dürer.

[7] The Latin inscription, composed by Celtes' personal secretary,[8] translates as: "I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg portrayed myself in appropriate [or everlasting] colours aged twenty-eight years".

Dürer was highly conscious of his self-image, and painted two earlier self-portraits: one in 1493 now in the Musée du Louvre, and another in 1498, now in the Museo del Prado.