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Nemesis (The Great Fortune)

Nemesis (The Great Fortune)

Artist/Maker (German, 1471–1528)
Dateca. 1502
MediumEngraving
DimensionsImage/Sheet: 13 × 9 1/16 in. (33 × 23 cm)
Credit LineA. Augustus Healy Fund
Object number1946.43
Status
Not on view
More Information
This print is a testament to Dürer’s originality and imagination. Drawing in equal parts on fantasy, theoretical texts from antiquity, and direct observation, he created an allegorical figure he called Nemesis. Shaping her body according to mathematically based Vitruvian proportions, Dürer also enlivens her form with unidealized characteristics, such as her ample rump and belly. Other fantastical attributes, for example the sphere beneath her feet and the wings on her back, associate her with Fortune and Victory. The landscape below is astonishingly detailed in its mastery of perspective and miniature form, but it is not clear what relationship it might have to the figure who walks in the heavens above it. As is common in Dürer’s prints, figures and themes conjured from his imagination are rarely the result of direct quotation from a single, identifiable source. Rather, they function as manifestations of his ingenious creativity.
Exhibition History
Albrecht Durer – 500th Anniversary
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 19, 1971 - March 28, 1971 )
Prints by Albrecht Durer
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (April 3, 1971 - May 5, 1971 )
The Art of Allusion: Allegorical Images of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (June 13, 1989 - August 13, 1989 )
Northern Renaissance Prints and Drawings
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (November 6, 1990 - January 27, 1991 )
Daughters of Eve: Representations of Women in German Renaissance Prints
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 9, 1993 - March 28, 1993 )
Dreams and Visions: Expressing the Inexplicable
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (September 9, 1997 - October 19, 1997 )
German Renaissance Prints 1470-1550
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (August 27, 1999 - January 30, 2000 )
Between Fact and Fantasy: The Artistic Imagination in Print
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 17, 2014 - June 22, 2014 )
What's in a Spell? Love Magic, Healing, and Punishment in the Early Modern Hispanic World
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (August 19, 2023 - December 12, 2023 )
Collections
  • European
This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator. Noticed a mistake? Have some extra information about this object? Please contact us.