Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Great Horse
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-840f7214ff34
- Date
- 1505
- Medium
- Engraving
- Department
- European Art
- Institution
- Minneapolis Institute of Art
- Object ID
- 67020
From LinkedCulture
This 1505 engraving by Albrecht Dürer shows a massive horse turned almost completely away from you, forcing your eye to reconstruct its full size from rounded, foreshortened hindquarters alone. A helmeted soldier in elaborate armor holds the reins beside a classical column, almost secondary to the animal's sheer bulk. Dürer spent years studying equine proportion, and this print proves it, turning a technical problem into a breathtaking demonstration of what Northern European engraving could achieve.
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From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record
Albrecht Dürer was so revered by his students that one of them requested and received a lock of the artist's hair after his death. In his teaching, Dürer preached the importance of proper proportion, both human and equine, which he sought to perfect during his entire career. More remarkable than the musculature and massive bulk of the animal depicted in The Great Horse, however, is the dramatic foreshortening of its body. To underscore the point, Dürer biographer Erwin Panofsky asks us to imagine the horse's size if viewed from the side. Germany, Europe
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Bequest of Herschel V. Jones
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