The Large Horse

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in plate, upper center: 1505; inscribed, in plate, lower right: AD [artist's mongram]

Label

A powerful horse fills the majority of this print, featured in great detail: each hair and muscle is imagined through precise, engraved lines. Albrecht Dürer, one of the most famous European printmakers, made several representations of horses. In sixteenth-century Germany these animals were associated with notions of virility, power, and violence. During this period, regular conflict marked Dürer’s homeland: internally, the Germans states fought one another while externally, the Germans maintained an adversarial relationship with the neighboring Ottoman Empire. As a result, mercenary soldiers were integral to society. Behind the horse, one such soldier appears. Only his head and feet are visible. The man and his impressive steed have almost become one, together suggesting Germanic power.

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Marlene Heck, Winter 2012

ARTH 7, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Jane Carroll, Spring 2012

ARTH 7, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Jane Carroll, Spring 2012

HIST 96, Topics in Medieval History, Walter Simons, Winter 2013

ARTH 7, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Jane Carroll, Spring 2012

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Mary Coffey, Winter 2014

GERM 03, Intermediate German, Klaus Mladek and Lisa Oberberger, Spring 2020

GERM 03, Intermediate German, Klaus Mladek and Lisa Oberberger, Spring 2020

GERM 003, Intermediate German, Lisa Oberberger, Fall 2020

GERM 003, Intermediate German, Lisa Oberberger, Fall 2020

GERM 03, Intermediate German, Lisa Oberberger, Winter 2021

GERM 03, Intermediate German, Lisa Oberberger, Spring 2021

GERM 03, Intermediate German, Klaus Mladek and Lisa Oberberger, Spring 2021

Exhibition History

A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 17-December 20, 1998.

Durer, Rembrandt & Beyond: From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, July 1-August 28, 1994, no. 34.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 20-August 20, 2023.

Publication History

Timothy Rub, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Kelly Pask, "A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1998, ill. p.93, listed, p.94, no. 97.

Stacey Sell, Durer, Rembrandt & Beyond: From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1994, p. 50, no. 34.

Provenance

William H. Schab Gallery, Inc., New York; sold to Jean K. and Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, on May 24, 1984; given to present collection, 1997.

Catalogue Raisonne

Bartsch (1803), Vol. 7: 106.97; Meder (1932): 94; Strauss (1973): 45

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Subjects