Saint Eustace
1501
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer spent his life in Nuremberg, a busy German city where artists traded prints like currency.
See the richer artist page1501
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Saint Eustace is a 1501 by Albrecht Dürer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a knight on horseback in a dark forest, staring at a stag with a glowing cross between its antlers. This engraving is Dürer’s largest. Every leaf and fur tuft feels real because he carved tiny lines into metal to hold ink. The stag’s miracle is easy to miss at first—like a hidden Easter egg in the trees. Look up other prints by Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528) to spot more of his quiet surprises.
Here, an encounter with nature dramatically alters a man’s journey through life. After Roman general Placidas tracked a stag in the forest, he saw a miraculous apparition of a crucifix between its horns. The miracle resulted in the general’s (thereafter Saint Eustace) immediate conversion to Christianity. Albrecht Dürer’s largest engraving demonstrates his mastery of tonal values and textures. His intense interest in nature’s variety makes finding the crucifix a kind of treasure hunt. Dürer took particular interest in the hunting dogs by carefully posing them to show five different aspects of…
The artist showed an interest in how bodies move in space by depicting a hunting dog five times from different angles.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Albrecht Dürer spent his life in Nuremberg, a busy German city where artists traded prints like currency.
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