The Small Horse (1505): Art, History and Details

The Small Horse (1505) 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:

This print, made as a companion work to The Large Horse, showcases the horse’s ideal and natural qualities. The small horse is perfectly proportioned and posed like a statue, while the large horse displays its muscularity and strength. Both display Albrecht Dürer’s graphic system, which depicts texture and space by varying the direction, density, and arrangement of lines within controlled sections. Short flicks smooth the transition from highlighted to shadowed areas, while elegant S curves define and create volume. These uniformly sized sheets, called “half sheets,” were Dürer’s most common format. Small and relatively inexpensive, they reached artists throughout Europe and beyond.

Object facts

• Title: The Small Horse
• Date: 1505
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany, early 16th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Platemark: 16.4 x 11 cm (6 7/16 x 4 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1958.112

Collection credit

Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

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.