The Apocalypse

The Apocalipsis cum figuris, or Apocalypse with Pictures, is one of the masterpieces of Albrecht Dürer. It is a cycle of fifteen large woodcut plates illustrating the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, traditionally attributed to John the Evangelist. This volume marks a significant innovation. It is the first instance in which an artist not only devised and designed the images, but likely also carved the woodblocks himself and published the work independently. In this way, Dürer created the first illustrated book to be entirely conceived and produced by a single artist. Another key innovation lies in its layout: each woodcut is placed on the recto of the sheet, while the sacred text appears on the verso. This arrangement offers the reader a dual narrative – visual and textual – that complement each other. Four main editions of the work are known. A preliminary proof copy, produced between 1496 and 1498, includes only the images, without accompanying text. In 1498, Albrecht Dürer released the first two official editions, one in Latin and the other in German, both with the text printed on the verso of the sheets. The final edition, published in 1511 and written in Latin, introduced a new illustrated frontispiece. The woodcuts on display here belong to this 1511 edition, with a single exception: the plate depicting The Martyrdom of Saint John, which lacks text on the verso and can therefore be plausibly dated to the experimental phase, between 1496 and 1498. With these powerful and dramatic images, Albrecht Dürer did not merely illustrate the text but reinterpreted it with a striking visionary force that continues to resonate today, combining the Northern taste for detail with a new sense of movement and expressive intensity.