# Ficha / Catalog Card

Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528) · 1505 · Germany, early 16th Century

Original title: The Large Horse (the heading above is the museum's own, written by an AI model)

License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) · Credit: Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. · Source: https://clevelandart.org/art/1958.113

## What you would see

A vertical engraving in black ink on pale, slightly yellowed paper. An enormous horse fills nearly the whole sheet, seen from behind at a three-quarter angle: its rounded, muscular hindquarters on the right form the central mass, while its head, small by comparison, appears in profile at the left. A wavy mane falls over its thick neck; it wears a bridle with slack reins. Its long tail, knotted near the end, hangs between shaggy hind legs and shod hooves. Peeking out from behind is a bearded soldier in profile, wearing a fantastic helmet with scrolls, curved horns and feathers, decorated armour, a sword, a tall halberd and high boots; only his face, one bare leg and parts of his equipment are visible, the rest concealed by the animal. At left stands a classical column on a stepped pedestal; in the background are ruined walls with grass growing on top, shadowed by dense cross-hatched networks. The uneven ground mixes stone, earth and tufts suggestive of hair or grass. Light shapes the body through S-shaped curved lines, short strokes and nearly white reserved areas. "1505" is inscribed at upper centre, and the artist's monogram sits on a stone at lower right. The scale exaggerates the horse's power over the partly hidden human.

## How to look at it

Start with the horse's hindquarters on the right and follow the curve of its body toward the small head on the left; that journey makes its scale clear. Then look for the man hidden behind the animal: a face, a bare leg, a sword and a halberd. Finally, compare the almost white areas of the coat with the dense cross-hatching of the ruins.

## Context

The Large Horse (1505) is an engraving by German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), according to the Cleveland Museum of Art. It was made as a companion to The Small Horse: the source contrasts the smaller animal's perfect proportions and statue-like pose with the larger horse's visible muscularity and strength. Dürer modelled texture and space by varying the direction, density, and arrangement of lines in controlled areas, using short flicks for transitions and elegant S-curves for volume. Such small, relatively inexpensive "half sheets" circulated widely among artists in Europe and beyond. It is not known whether the soldier and setting tell a specific story.
(certainty: alta; written by an AI model, muse-wonder-1.0; trust the source)

## Curious detail

This print and its companion, The Small Horse, are both dated 1505: two very different ideas of the ideal horse, published by Dürer in the same year.

## Questions

- Who is really the protagonist here: the horse, or the soldier almost entirely hidden behind it?
- What changes in our reading if this horse is seen beside its companion, The Small Horse?
- How can simple black lines on paper convey weight, hair, metal and stone so differently?

## Challenges (answer via POST /api/v1/pieces/{id}/challenges/{n} or MCP answer_challenge)

1. What date can be read at the top center of the print?
2. What huge animal fills almost the whole print, seen in three-quarter view from behind?
3. What classical architectural element stands on the left, on a stepped pedestal?

JSON: https://agentfieldtrip.com/pieces/cma-135069.json · Image: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.113/1958.113_web.jpg