The Whore of Babylon

Artist Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471 - 1528)

Dateca. 1496-1497

MediumWoodcut

DimensionsImage: 15 1/2 × 11 3/16 inches (39.37 × 28.42 cm)
Mat: 21 1/4 × 16 inches (53.98 × 40.64 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number33-492

Signed(bl.,b.c.):"AD"

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This is one of a series of 15 woodcuts that the acclaimed printmaker Albrecht Dürer created for his large, illustrated version of The Apocalypse, inspired by the New Testament Book of Revelation. Here, Babylon, a city exploding in flames at the distant right, symbolizes the presence of evil on earth. Angels and the armies of Heaven descend at upper left as Babylon's harlot, perched atop a beast with seven heads (the seven deadly sins) offers a pokal, or goblet, "full of abominations and filthiness" to astonished bystanders. Dürer's was the first book to be conceived, illustrated and published by an artist, and it treated the popular subject with unprecedented skill and a dark, imaginative intensity.

Provenance

With Frederick Keppel & Co., New York, by June-July 8, 1933 [1];

Purchased from Frederick Keppel & Co., through Alden Galleries, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.

NOTES:

[1] Paul Gardner, Director, discusses this drawing in a letter to John H. Bender, Director, Alden Galleries, in a letter dated June 22, 1933, Nelson-Atkins Archives, RG01-01, Director’s Office Records, box 1, folder 3, Alden Galleries. Gardner and Bender were negotiating for the drawing with David Keppel, director of Frederick Keppel & Co., a New York print dealer.

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