Albrecht Dürer, The
Sea Monster / Das Meerwunder, engraving, c. 1498 - 1500. photo: John Tamblyn
Albrecht Dürer's
imaginative engraving of a sea monster abducting a beautiful woman belongs to
the period of the High Renaissance rather than the Baroque. However the
artist's fame ensured that his extraordinary prints remained collectible works
well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Sea Monster remains among his more enigmatic
images. In the foreground the artist draws a contrast between beauty
(represented by the female nude) and monstrosity (represented by the sea
creature proper). The subject has been variously identified by scholars without
any general consensus as to its precise meaning. Stories of beautiful women
being pursued or abducted by sea monsters had been popular since antiquity and
possible connections between this image and the tales of Glaucus and Scylla or
Poseidon's pursuit of Amymone have been drawn. Yet the elaborate headdress worn
by the female figure, which closely resembles the fashion of Milanese
noblewomen in Dürer's time, has led to alternative interpretations which link
the subject to popular northern Italian stories of abductions.
While the eroticism of the nude figure may be
highlighted in the image the bizzarre monstrosity cannot go
unnoticed. Dürer's attention to detail betrays a fascination with curious natural
forms which was underscored by the artist's own collecting habits. At
the Dürer House in Nuremburg, Germany, remnants of a 'cabinet of wonders'
(wunderkammer) can still be seen today. Amongst the varous
curiosities Dürer sent back to Germany, while travelling through Europe,
were "animal horns, fish fins, a piece of coral and a weapon from
Calicut."*
* A. Hyatt Mayor, Prints & People: A Social
History of Printed Pictures, (New York: 1972), p. 48.
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