Image Analysis “And then I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud,” an engraving etched by Albrecht Dürer in 1498, depicts an angel, covered in a cloud, descending from the heavens, with one pillar-like foot on the land and one on the sea. The angel is almost comically shoving a scroll into the mouth of a man sitting on shore. Behind the angel in the ocean, there is a sea monster, two geese, and a few boats. The angel has one hand on the book and one pointing towards Heaven, where small angels sit on clouds. The engraving is framed on one side by the trees of the forest that grow next to the man sitting, and the focal point of the image is the radiant halo around the angel’s face. This engraving is inscribed
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This series, published simultaneously in Latin and German, was the driving factor in Albrecht Dürer’s fame, largely in part to the “masterly and poignant style as the world had never seen or dream of until then,” that Dürer brought (Knackfuss, 1900). “And then I saw,” was the tenth image in the series. The small lines, dots, and dashes in the image depict shadows; Dürer was “the first to introduce contrast of light and shade in drawings by using close cross-hatching,” (Knackfuss, 1900) that eliminated the need for color in the …show more content…
Dürer chooses to portray the “mighty angel” in the middle differently than the other five angels to show that he is the most important in the image. He is the angel who is delivering the scroll to John, and warning him not to share the information with others, but to keep it sealed to himself. Contrary to most depictions of angels, this angel does not have visible wings or a long white robe, but it can be assumed that the angel’s wings and robe are shrouded by the clouds. He does, however, have a glowing halo around his head and a grandeur about his person that leaves no doubt that he is an angel. Juxtaposed with the mighty angel in the middle, the angel just to the right of him looks like a stereotypical image of an angel. He has the white. long billowing robe and the majestic beautiful angel wings that most people picture when thinking of an angel. These wings are visually similar to a bird’s wings, like an eagle or a hawk. Though it is not clear what the angel is doing, it looks as if it is going to touch the branches of a tree without leaves perhaps blessing it to prosper and grow heartily. Unlike both angels previously mentioned, the four angels at the top of the etching appear as baby angels, similar to what a cherub would look like. However, cherubs are actually not mentioned in most versions of the Bible, they only have references in the Hebrew Bible and
This series, published simultaneously in Latin and German, was the driving factor in Albrecht Dürer’s fame, largely in part to the “masterly and poignant style as the world had never seen or dream of until then,” that Dürer brought (Knackfuss, 1900). “And then I saw,” was the tenth image in the series. The small lines, dots, and dashes in the image depict shadows; Dürer was “the first to introduce contrast of light and shade in drawings by using close cross-hatching,” (Knackfuss, 1900) that eliminated the need for color in the …show more content…
Dürer chooses to portray the “mighty angel” in the middle differently than the other five angels to show that he is the most important in the image. He is the angel who is delivering the scroll to John, and warning him not to share the information with others, but to keep it sealed to himself. Contrary to most depictions of angels, this angel does not have visible wings or a long white robe, but it can be assumed that the angel’s wings and robe are shrouded by the clouds. He does, however, have a glowing halo around his head and a grandeur about his person that leaves no doubt that he is an angel. Juxtaposed with the mighty angel in the middle, the angel just to the right of him looks like a stereotypical image of an angel. He has the white. long billowing robe and the majestic beautiful angel wings that most people picture when thinking of an angel. These wings are visually similar to a bird’s wings, like an eagle or a hawk. Though it is not clear what the angel is doing, it looks as if it is going to touch the branches of a tree without leaves perhaps blessing it to prosper and grow heartily. Unlike both angels previously mentioned, the four angels at the top of the etching appear as baby angels, similar to what a cherub would look like. However, cherubs are actually not mentioned in most versions of the Bible, they only have references in the Hebrew Bible and