Albrecht Dürer’s Horsemen – Harbingers of the Apocalypse

This woodcut completed by Albrecht Dürer in 1497-8 and entitled the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is one of a series devoted to the Revelation of St John the Divine. In this book of the Bible the end of the world is associated with war, hunger, disease and plagues. This image of the Apocalypse shaped the medieval view of the world. The four horsemen and the catastrophes linked to them, especially the plague, were thus interpreted as harbingers of the imminent end of the world.