The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Durer Engravings (1471-1528)
Durer Engravings – The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Edit attribution
Download full size: 2180×3000 px (1,9 Mb)
Painter: Durer Engravings
Album navigation:
"The Apocalypse" is Albrecht Dürer’s world-famous series of wooden prints on a religious theme. The series, made by the German artist over a three-year period beginning in 1496, consists of 15 works depicting the biblical Revelation of the last judgment. The engravings have been published twice. And the most famous is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The engraver’s work illustrates the words recorded in the sixth chapter of John’s Revelation about the four colored horses and their horsemen.
ArtClub
Best Contemporary Atists
Description of Albrecht Dürer’s engraving The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
"The Apocalypse" is Albrecht Dürer’s world-famous series of wooden prints on a religious theme. The series, made by the German artist over a three-year period beginning in 1496, consists of 15 works depicting the biblical Revelation of the last judgment. The engravings have been published twice. And the most famous is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The engraver’s work illustrates the words recorded in the sixth chapter of John’s Revelation about the four colored horses and their horsemen. From right to left, these riders are engraved. The first, with his crowned head, has lowered the reins of his white horse, drawn his bowstring as far as it will go and is looking ahead with pity - the Victor. The second - swung a huge sword, blinded by rage, he rushes the horse - War. The third - headless, richly dressed, with a scale in his right hand, looking indifferently somewhere in the distance - Hunger. The fourth is an emaciated old man with a trident, his bony leg is almost touching the surface of the earth, and his horse is also emaciated, with a twisted rope instead of reins, without shoes on the hooves - Death himself.
After the equestrians, according to the Bible, follows Hell, which Dürer depicted as a terrible beast with an open toothy mouth. The entire horde rushes along, unnoticed by the hooves of a bunch of people: there is the ruler in a royal crown, and the townsman and the peasant, even a monk. A lone winged angel hovers above the swift, menacing movement of the figures. No one will escape punishment for evil deeds committed in life - this is what the master wishes to show us in this engraving.
The characters are shown close to the viewer, so that the illusion of merging the space of the real and the painted. "The Four Horsemen" are about to jump out of the frame and catch everyone, a reckoning is inevitable. The artist shared with us his apocalyptic premonitions.
The 1498 engraving gave Albrecht Dürer the world fame he deserved.
You cannot comment Why?