War the Horseman Classic Art Classic Art 4 Horsemen

Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498, woodcut, xv-1/four x 11-vii/xvi″ / 38.viii x 29.1 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Cowboy movies

Albrecht Dürer'southward woodcut,4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, always reminds me of my lifelong love of Hollywood cowboy movies. American westerns are nearly all predicated on Christian themes, and riddled with simple symbolic numbers. Possibly you are familiar with the 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven and their connectedness to the 7 Virtues? And in terms of the Seven Vices, in the 2007 remake of 3.x to Yuma, the 'villain,' Ben Wade, is trailed by half dozen members of his outfit who try to free him from his captors—his release would restore their numbers to seven (and demand I betoken out that ten minus three—the 3.10 of the title— is 7?). In the original affiche for High Apex, Gary Cooper confronts 4 villains. This is why, for me, Durer's Four Horsemen, drawn from the Book of Revelation (the last book of the New Attestation which tells of the end of the world and the coming of the kingdom of God), have ever been the sinister apocalyptic cowboys of world-ending destruction; Conquest, War, Pestilence (or Dearth) and Death itself.

Of class, that'southward not at all what Dürer intended. The image was made as i of a serial of fifteen illustrations for a 1498 edition of the Apocalypse, a field of study of popular interest at the brink of any new millennium.  In 1511, after the earth had failed to end, the plates were republished and further cemented Dürer'due south enduring fame as a print-maker.

Particular, Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498

The horsemen

In the text of Revelation, the main distinguishing feature of the four horses is their color; white for conquest, red for war, black for pestilence and/or famine, and pale (from 'pallor') for death (Clint Eastwood, Pale Rider, anyone?). The riders each arrive armed with a rather obvious attribute; conquest with a bow, state of war with a sword, and a set of balances for pestilence/famine. Dürer'south pale rider carries a sort of pitchfork or trident, despite the fact that he'south given no weapon in the Biblical account; he simply unleashes hell.

Hither's the text from Revelation, chapter 6:

The Outset Seal—Rider on White Horse
So I saw when the Lamb broke one of the vii seals, and I heard one of the 4 living creatures saying as with a vocalization of thunder, "Come." I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sabbatum on information technology had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

The Second Seal—State of war
When He bankrupt the second seal, I heard the second living fauna saying, "Come." And another, a ruby equus caballus, went out; and to him who sat on information technology, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay i another; and a great sword was given to him.

The Third Seal—Dearth
When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, "Come." I looked, and behold, a black equus caballus; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand…"

The Fourth Seal—Expiry
When the Lamb broke the quaternary seal, I heard the vox of the fourth living creature saying, "Come up." I looked, and behold, an ashen equus caballus; and he who sabbatum on it had the proper noun Expiry; and Hades was post-obit with him. Say-so was given to them over a fourth of the globe, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the globe.

The quality of Dürer'due south woodcut is breathtaking; 1 hears and feels the furor of the clattering hooves and the details, shading and purity of form are astonishing. Dürer's unique genius as a woodcut artist was his power to conceive such complex and finely detailed images in the negative—woodcut is a relief process in which 1 must cut away the substance of the design to preserve the outlines. Before Dürer it was often a rather crude affair. No one could depict woodblocks with the finesse of Dürer (much of the cutting was washed by skilled craftsmen following Dürer'southward complex outlines). The images are astonishingly detailed and textural, as finely tuned as drawings. So influential was Dürer'south graphic output, in both woodcut and engraving, that his prints became pop models for succeeding generations of painters. He was no hateful painter himself, producing a varied and clear array of self-portraits, as well as religious works, and turning his mind and his mitt to the product of an influential book on perspective. He was a humanist, painter, print-maker, theorist and corking observer of nature and is therefore ofttimes referred to in pop soapbox as the 'Leonardo of the North'—although his actual output was considerably greater than that Italian Renaissance master.

Detail, Albrecht Dürer, The Iv Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498

Dürer's detail genius here is the translation of the distinctive colors of the horses into a black-and-white medium, which he achieves by very distinctly drawing their various weapons and past placing them in order from background to foreground, slightly overlapping, so that they ride beyond the composition in the same order every bit they appear in the text. This places the apparition of Death, a skeletal monster on a skeletal horse, in the foreground, trampling the figures in his path.

Item, Albrecht Dürer, The Iv Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498

In the wake of Death's trampling hooves, a monstrous, fanged reptilian animate being noshes on the mitre of a Bishop, a prefiguration, perhaps, of the imminence of the Protestant Reformation that would sweep across northern Europe in opposition to the excesses of the church building and papacy.

In this context, the thundering hooves of the horses could presage religious reform (Dürer'south Four Apostles, painted for Nuremberg'due south town hall, bears inscriptions from the texts of Martin Luther), although Luther himself did non approve of the visionary nature of Revelation, declaring information technology, "neither churchly nor prophetic."

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Source: https://smarthistory.org/albrecht-durer-four-horsemen/

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