A Lady on Horseback with a Landsquenet

Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528)

A Lady on Horseback with a Landsquenet

1497

Engraving

E, 4.142

This artist’s book, Andy Warhol’s Index (Book), allows another glimpse into Warhol’s working methods. The book is opened to a photograph that captures an intimate moment of the artist at work, amidst row upon row of unfinished silkscreens, feverishly working toward the perfect print.
The photograph of Warhol above, which also appears in Warhol’s Index (Book), implies that he viewed himself as a master printmaker in the tradition of Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), the printmaking great of the Northern Renaissance. Dürer’s monogram, a combination of his initials, A and D, appears at bottom right. Warhol’s unusual jacket offers a second, subtler nod to Dürer. Not only indicative of Warhol’s fashion-forward style, the jacket’s shredded sleeves and high collar also recall the traditional attire of a landsknecht, a type of sixteenth-century German mercenary frequently depicted by Dürer (right).

The British Museum

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