The Four Horsemen, from The Apocalypse (c. 1498): Art, History and Details

The Four Horsemen, from The Apocalypse (c. 1498) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In 1498 Dürer published a book illustrating the Revelation of John or the Apocalypse of John, the last book of the New Testament. The images were unique in their large scale, breadth of concept, and unity of design. The first book to be both published and illustrated by the artist, it comprised a title page and 15 full-sheet woodcuts featuring text on the verso of all the sheets except the last one. Often visible through the paper, the text mars the image on the recto of the sheet. The finest impressions were most often printed without text, like this one of The Four Horsemen. Here, Dürer suggested the vigorous momentum of the horsemen through the windblown clothing of the riders, the windswept clouds, and the figures trampled beneath the hooves of the approaching horses.

Object facts

• Title: The Four Horsemen, from The Apocalypse
• Date: c. 1498
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany, late 15th-early 16th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Dimensions: Sheet: 40 x 28.8 cm (15 3/4 x 11 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1932.313

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• H. S. F. “A Woodcut by Dürer.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 20, no. 3 (March 1933): 35–37.
• Milliken, William. "Silver Jubilee Exhibition." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 28, no.6 (June 1941): 88-108
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.