Aldrecht Durer

Aldrecht Durer lived from 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528 and he was a German painter, engraver, printmaker and mathematician.  He was referred as the “Father of printing”.  In this review I will be looking at one of his printing works, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1498). This piece of work is a part of a series of 15 woodcuts that Durer created and was published in 1498 for The Book of Revelation in the Bible.  

When I first looked at some of his works which were paintings, I thought I wasn’t going to say anything positive about his work because I don’t really like art from that period but then I had a look at his prints and quite liked them.

I picked this woodcut print as below which is the earliest form of relief printing. When I first looked at the print it appeared to look like a drawing but it’s not. I find the colour in it a bit dull but I like the details and the fine lines in it and I think that these fine lines look very hard to do. I have done lino printing, which is like woodcut, and I found it to be very hard to get fine lines.  I researched some information on how he has done these and he would draw the design directly onto the woodblock itself, or glue a paper drawing to the block, but from my research I found out that he would get a specialist craftsman to cut the wood blocks.