Albrecht Dürer, The Rhinoceros, 1515 — the woodcut sheet reproduced whole, the armoured animal in profile under the eight lines of German letterpress

Albrecht Dürer – The Rhinoceros, 1515 | Giclée Print

40 × 30 cm / 15.7 × 11.8 in — Original size, 1:1
CHF 49.00
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Albrecht Dürer, The Rhinoceros, 1515 — the woodcut sheet reproduced whole, the armoured animal in profile under the eight lines of German letterpress
  • Albrecht Dürer, The Rhinoceros, 1515 — the woodcut sheet reproduced whole, the armoured animal in profile under the eight lines of German letterpress
  • Dürer's Rhinoceros as a 50 × 40 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the head, the horn and the plated skin, cut line by line into the woodblock in 1515
  • Dürer's Rhinoceros as a 50 × 40 cm giclée print, unframed, shown flat on white, with the small Museartis signet at the lower left
  • Dürer's Rhinoceros as a 40 × 30 cm giclée print, unframed, shown flat on white, with the small Museartis signet at the lower left
  • Albrecht Dürer, The Rhinoceros, 1515 — the woodcut sheet reproduced whole, the armoured animal in profile under the eight lines of German letterpress
  • Dürer's Rhinoceros as a 50 × 40 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the head, the horn and the plated skin, cut line by line into the woodblock in 1515
  • Dürer's Rhinoceros as a 50 × 40 cm giclée print, unframed, shown flat on white, with the small Museartis signet at the lower left
  • Dürer's Rhinoceros as a 40 × 30 cm giclée print, unframed, shown flat on white, with the small Museartis signet at the lower left
Albrecht Dürer – The Rhinoceros, 1515 | Giclée Print

Albrecht Dürer – The Rhinoceros, 1515 | Giclée Print

CHF 49.00
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In May 1515 a rhinoceros arrived in Lisbon, a gift from the Sultan of Cambay to King Manuel I of Portugal. Word travelled north with a letter and a rough sketch. Dürer, in Nuremberg, never laid eyes on the animal. He cut this woodcut from the description alone.

He got things wrong. The plates of skin become riveted armour. A second small horn sprouts from the shoulder. The legs are scaled like a lizard's. And none of it mattered: for the next two hundred and fifty years, European schoolbooks drew their rhinoceros from this sheet rather than from life. It outlasted the animal itself, which drowned off the Italian coast on its way to the Pope.

It is the finest example I know of an image defeating a fact — and a reminder that a picture can be wrong and still be true to the thing it wants to show.

Scale
Most print shops stretch any image onto any sheet without comment. We do not. This sheet is offered at the size Dürer cut it, and once enlarged, with the factor named.

The print
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.

Provenance
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), The Rhinoceros, 1515; woodcut with letterpress, image 23.8 × 30.1 cm.

Where this comes from
The museum file, the measurements, and what we are allowed to sell: the record for this sheet.

Further reading
The Rhinoceros Dürer Never Saw · Why This Print Is Not Bigger

The record behind this sheet — which impression we chose and why, what we measured, what we are allowed to sell, and the framing dimensions for this sheet.

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