Saint Eustace
Fifty Years of Gifts to the Print Department, Part 1, 1933-1958: 50th Anniversary Exhibition: October 23 - November 20, 1983, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 23-November 20, 1983, no. 6.
Albrecht Dürer’s Saint Eustace demonstrates his ability to depict the natural world with an almost scientific attention to detail. This ambitious engraving, the largest he ever produced, portrays the conversion of a second century Roman general to Christianity. While out hunting in the woods, Saint Eustace had a vision of the crucified Christ between the antlers of a deer. Here, five hunting dogs rest on a rocky hillside where tufts of grass compete for space with gnarled roots and branches. Dürer’s contemporaries greatly admired the dogs and copied their various poses.
[George L. McKenna], The Fifty Years of Gifts to the Print Department, Part 1, 1933-1958: 50th Anniversary Exhibition: October 23 - November 20, 1983, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), no. 6.
