Landser's wonderful sow
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| Landser's wonderful sow |
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| Albrecht Dürer , 1496 or later |
| Copper engraving |
| 12.1 x 12.7 cm |
| Print at the Portland Art Museum |
Landser's wonderful sow , also known as Landser's deformed sow , is a copper engraving by Albrecht Dürer showing a deformed pig born in 1496 in Landser , Alsace .
This animal had a head with two tongues and four ears, two bodies and eight legs, of which, according to Dürer's representation, it could use six for standing and walking, while two front legs protruded into the air. Scientifically termed it was a case of Duplicitas posterior with notomelia and Dignathia inferior .
description
Albrecht Dürer depicted Landser's sow standing on six of her eight feet, as if she had met him in person and alive. The animal stands, turned to the right, with its mouth open in front of the gates of Landser. City and landscape scenery form the background, in the foreground, apart from the wonderful (in the sense of wondrous) sow, only a little rock and grass scenery and, in the very front center, Dürer's monogram can be seen. Dürer's detailed engraving shows Landser's wondrous sow as a presumably full-grown, very hairy specimen of its kind, with both tongues sticking out of its mouth. One pair of ears hangs down, the other is set up; of the two front legs that the creature uses to stand, the right one obviously belongs to the right pig's body and the left to the left. A kind of eel line on the side of the right pig's body facing the viewer as well as the suggestion of ribs and chest make it clear that the body axis of the animal's body is twisted and that the actual back is turned to the side, especially in the front area, which is why the inner front legs are in the air protrude, while the position of the abdomen seems less deviating from the norm and apparently also allows both hind feet to be placed on the ground. Whether a leg shortening is caused by the inclined position of the hips cannot be clearly seen in the picture.
The stitch measures 12.1 cm by 12.7 cm. Prints can be found in the Portland Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum , among others .
history
Dürer probably did not see the animal alive, but was based on the one hand on Sebastian Brant's depiction of the sow by Landser, on the other hand on a stuffed specimen that was shown in Nuremberg around Easter 1496 , although it is obviously not entirely clear whether it is it was about the original sow from Landser. In any case, Brant, who published numerous leaflets on various "natural wonders", received, according to Marco Heiles, the real sow von Landser from the village administrator on March 1, 1496, but apparently distributed a far less lifelike image of the animal than Dürer.
Malformations such as Landser's sow preoccupied people for centuries before Dürer's depiction. Apart from the belief in prodigies , which is reflected in parts of the Bible and exegetical literature, the writings of Aristotle , in which the monstrous is interpreted as an error of nature, also the historia naturalis of the older Pliny and the only fragmentary Prodigium liber by Julius Obsequens from the 4th century AD
After a rethinking began with Augustine and the unusual had also been seen as part of God's plan of salvation, around 1500 another change of perspective took place. In Dürer's time, the belief in prodigies again blossomed: Johannes Lichtenberger, for example, had warned of the conjunction of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn, which occurred in 1484 under the sign of Scorpio, whereupon a syphilis epidemic that broke out at that time was promptly associated with this "warning sign". Dürer himself probably created a woodcut on the so-called lust epidemic in 1496, the same year in which Landser's sow became known, which was published together with a poem by the doctor Dietrich Ulsenius . Ulsenius also thought the constellation was ominous. The series of apocalyptic depictions by Dürer, referring to the coming calamity, includes the depiction of the Siamese twins from Ertingen , who probably lived from 1512 to 1520, in addition to these sheets . In 1499 Johannes Stöffler announced further disaster, Johann Carion predicted a general flood in 1521. In the decades around the appearance of the sow by Landser, numerous leaflets were distributed that dealt with impending catastrophes, which one inferred from omens such as the birth of the misshapen pig. Even Emperor Charles V was frightened and had research done about the impending disaster.
Nothing seems to be known about the fate of the historic sow von Landser and the preparation that was shown in Nuremberg.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.symbolforschung.ch/files/pdf/Holenstein.pdf
- ↑ http://fabry-jahr.de/V_archiv/2010-09-09/2010-09-09.html ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/B/D%C3%BCrer,+Albrecht%3A+Die+mi%C3%9Fgebilden+Sau
- ↑ http://pamcollections.org/detail.php?type=related&kv=5110&t=people ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://uni-bonn.academia.edu/MarcoHeiles/Papers/308274/Monster_und_Humanisten._Zum_Bedeutungswandel_der_Monstra_im_aushaben_Mittelalter , p. 10
- ↑ Dorothea Scholl, From the 'Grottesken' to the Grotesken. The constitution of a poetics of the grotesque in the Italian Renaissance , Lit Verlag 2004, ISBN 978-3825854454 , p. 132
- ↑ http://uni-bonn.academia.edu/MarcoHeiles/Papers/308274/Monster_und_Humanisten._Zum_Bedeutungswandel_der_Monstra_im_aushaben_Mittelalter
- ↑ Johannes Fried, Ascent from Downfall: Apocalyptic Thinking and the Emergence of Modern Science in the Middle Ages , Beck 2001, ISBN 978-3406482090 , p. 173 ff.
