The Monstrous Sow of Landser (1496): Artwork and History

The Monstrous Sow of Landser (1496) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Just as he never saw the rhinoceros he portrayed in another woodcut, Albrecht Dürer never witnessed the female pig born at Landser in Germany in 1496 with two conjoined bodies. He did very likely read about it in a broadsheet with a rudimentary woodcut and a more extensive text description. His surprisingly realistic rendering of how the unseen pig—which died soon after birth—might have looked is similarly convincing but inaccurate. While the engraving does not insist on a religious interpretation, misbirths and other unusual natural occurrences were interpreted as signs during this period, either of the imminent Apocalypse or the need for new crusades against the Turks.

Object facts

• Title: The Monstrous Sow of Landser
• Date: 1496
• Artist attribution: Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528
• Place of origin: Germany
• Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: 12.1 × 12.8 cm (4 13/16 × 5 1/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1956.932

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.