Woodcuts preceded engravings as a print medium. The technique is laborious
because the design is ¿ rst drawn and then must be cut away wherever no line
has been made. The design is on the raised surface left after the woodcutter
has cut away everything else. The wood block had to be soft enough to cut
but hard enough that the ridges would not break in printing; thus, a solid
wood plank was used for strength.
Our example shows Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (c. 1498).
This woodcut reveals hundreds of ¿ ne lines—far more lines than open white
spaces. Note the thinness of the lines from the raised ridges of wood. The
subject came from the Book of Revelation. From the right, the apocalyptic
horsemen are Invasion with his bow, Civil Strife with the sword, Famine
with the scales, and Death on the Pale Horse. The passage in Revelation
concludes, “And power was given unto them...to kill with sword, and with
hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” This passage, from
the last and one of the most powerful books of the New Testament, received
its most famous visualization in Dürer’s woodcut. Note his monogram at the
bottom center. The expressive characteristics of woodcuts appealed to Dürer,
but he also produced some supreme examples in engraving.
Our next image shows an engraving, Adam and Eve (Fall of Man)
(c. 1504, signed and dated in full on plaque). The nude ¿ gures are evidence
of Dürer’s interest in Italian art, but they are placed in front of dense woods
studied with the probing eye of a northern Naturalist. Note the animals at the
feet of the ¿ rst couple. The compelling rendition of surface textures and the
poses of these animals are delightful.
Adam grasps the tree of life, and Eve takes the fruit from the serpent, but
already she holds a fruit in her other hand from the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. Looking for an ideal type of beauty, Dürer studied drawings
or prints of famous Classical sculpture. He found a model for Adam in the
Apollo Belvedere. Adam’s pose is the reverse of the Apollo because of the
reverse nature of printmaking.
The engraving St. Jerome in His Study (c. 1514) is one of the most admired
prints ever produced, for the expressive power of the saint engaged in his
work and for Dürer’s creation of an interior space glowing with direct and