Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Four Horsemen
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-840f7214ff34
- Date
- 1498 (1511 edition)
- Medium
- Woodcut
- Department
- European Art
- Institution
- Minneapolis Institute of Art
- Object ID
- 9192
From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record
Albrecht Dürer achieved such brilliance in the art of woodcut that his prints in this medium approach the precision of engraving. With his fifteen astoundingly detailed Apocalypse woodcuts, he redefined what was possible in the medium. The series interprets the apostle John's Book of Revelation (6:1-8), a story that, amid the millennial fears prevalent in the 1490s, was very much on people's minds. Spreading calamity everywhere, the Four Horsemen charge relentlessly toward the right, stacked in the shape of an arrow: the king with his bow (War), the slaughterer with his sword (Discord), the well-fed man with his scales (Famine), and the wide-eyed figure with his pitchfork (Death). Germany, Europe
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- The William M. Ladd Collection Gift of Herschel V. Jones, 1916
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