Albrecht Dürer's Seven Lampstands

Albrecht Dürer's Seven Lampstands

Albrecht Dürer was only 27 years old in 1498 when he published his Apocalypse with Pictures, a famous series of 15 woodcuts illustrating the Book of Revelation that made Dürer an overnight wonder in Germany and beyond.  One of his woodcuts, entitled, “Vision of the Seven Lampstands” (above; click on the picture to enlarge it), is an illustration of the text we heard only part of at Mass yesterday.  The entire text reads: 

Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and when I turned, I saw seven gold lampstands and in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, wearing an ankle-length robe, with a gold sash around his chest.  The hair of his head was as white as white wool or as snow, and his eyes were like a fiery flame. His feet were like polished brass refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing water.  In his right hand he held seven stars.  A sharp, two-edged sword came out of his mouth, and his face shone like the sun at its brightest.

Mary Elizabeth Podles, retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, calls Dürer’s rendition of this image “hallucinatory and surreal,” and offers this brief commentary on the image:

The two figures, John and the Holy One on the throne, are fully articulated in space and speak an eloquent emotional language of gesture.  Dürer by this time had been to Italy and absorbed the lessons of the budding Italian Renaissance.  But the space his figures occupy is clearly the realm of the imagination and the supernatural, with its floating lampstands and the startling effects of light around Christ’s head and hand.

Here the artist must face the challenge of giving visual form to what is essentially unseeable.  The mysterious swords which issues from Christ’s lips points us to the book he holds:  the sword of John’s metaphorical vision is the Word of God, which separates truth from falsehood, good from evil, joint from marrow.  Here, then, the two-dimensional aspect of the page, in tension with the three-dimensional figures, resolves itself into a flat pattern of triangles and circles, mystical forms with symbolic significance:  John’s metaphorical language has both a literal and an abstract form on the page.

Recognizing God as the source of his creative talents, Albrecht Dürer offers a compelling vision of the final book of the Catholic Bible.

To see high quality reproductions of all of Dürer's Apocalypse illustrations, click here.
For Podles' complete article, click here.

Image source