Horsemen Critical Review: The Four

¶ … Horsemen

Critical Review:

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" an image of the artist: Albrecht Durer

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" by the engraver and artist Albrecht Durer is a medieval image that still has a powerful, eerie resonance today, much like the Biblical Book of Revelation that inspired the carving of the woodcut. The woodcut print shows four mounted men on an apparent mission of destruction, all of them powerful enough to do great harm to humanity in their own unique ways. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are described in eight verses of the Biblical Book of Revelation, when the seven seals of the book are being broken. As the seals are broken, a white, red, and black horse subsequently appear, followed by the final pale horse: The references to the horses begin as the speaker says, "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Revelations 6:1-8)

According to one commentator, each of the four riders of the approaching apocalypse, or end of days, is summoned into human history the heavenly breaker of the seals. "Notice the phase 'he was given a crown', 'was given power', 'do not damage the oil and the wine', 'were given power over'," all of which indicates to many interpreters the four riders are under the sovereignty of God. ("The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse," 2005) in other words, even though the destruction by the riders is terrible, it is under the administration and plan of a higher order, even if the riders' demeanors are wild and unruly.

Some interpret the first white horseman, as Christ, other commentators as a false prophet -- the warlike demeanor of the figure in the text, which is reflected in the Durer woodcut, seems to underline such an interpretation. Indeed, Durer's woodcut has become so famous that it may have influenced the tendency to see the first white horseman in a more negative than a positive light, underscoring the power and influence of representational Biblical art upon popular theology and the collective cultural religious imagination. Of course, the fact that the other horsemen are so negative in their apparent intentions towards humanity, as the second horseman, riding the red horse, seems to be representative of war, the third horseman on the black horse seems to spread famine, and the fourth horseman on the pale horse is explicitly named death, further contribute to the sense that collectively, all four figures are destructive.

In the print, three of the powerful riders on their white, red, and black horses gallop at the forefront of the work. The white horses' rider holds a bow and wears a medieval, peaked hat towards the background, the caped red horse's rider wields a sword, and nearest the foreground the black horse's rider is bareheaded, holding a scale. The skeletal horse with the skeletal man is evidently the pale horse's rider. The specificity of the artist illustrates that Durer knew the Biblical text's images quite intimately and wished to transcribe them in fairly accurate detail. However, the artist translates these images of war, pestilence, famine, and death into medieval terms of his own era -- the warrior's crown of the white horse's rider is clearly of the artist's age, as is the garb of the second rider, and the small metal scales held by the third are similar to that of a medieval apothecary, used in weighing grain with weights.