Dürer was the first major artist to exploit fully the visual potential of the technology of printing. He took the wood engraving and the woodcut to new levels of technical virtuosity and artistic expression. The fifteen full-page woodcuts that made up his Apocalypse are in the tradition of the great medieval illuminated manuscripts of the book of Revelation, which fully exploit the visual possibilities of the visionary text. With each engraving Dürer concentrates several episodes into a single, highly dramatic image. Shown here is the most celebrated: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, which arrive when the Lamb with Seven Horns and Seven Eyes takes a scroll from Christ and breaks its seven seals. 

Douce D subt. 41, fols. [4v–5r]