Albrecht DURER. The little horse.

Nineteenth-century copy of Durer's original printed in 1505.The young horse stands on a strip of land in front of a perspective arch architecture. The front quarters, the dilated nostrils, the erect neck and the upper lip that exposes the incisors are the clear signs of a fiery attitude. He is accompanied by a man wearing modern three-quarter armor, holding a halberd and wearing an imaginary butterfly helmet and winged shoes. The magnificent animal largely hides the soldier, "placing him significantly in the second row" (Mende 2001, p. 69). The perspective view of the circular arch falls on a centrally positioned smoking basin. The year 1505 above finds its equivalent in the cube-shaped stone at the bottom of the photo, on which Dürer has set his monogram. Jens Sroka interprets the motif of the smoking bowl in Dürer's engraving as "encrypted reference to the instinctive drive and the voluptuousness of the stallion" (Sroka 2004, p. 254). For him, the theme of the pony is the moderation of human sensuality by reason. However, Matthias Mende is not convinced by this interpretation, which goes back to Erwin Panofsky: "The monumental tranquility of the animal belies such thoughts. And how does the warrior tame in reality - without halters or reins! - such an animal? Obviously a will, at this point, not held by gangs. In anticipation of representations of wild horses in Hans Baldung Grien or Sebald Beham animal sensuality cannot be the subject of the recording by Dürer B. 96". (Mende 2001, p. 71)