The Beast with the Horns like a Lamb,

1498, 1511 edition

Merging two chapters in the Book of Revelation, this scene depicts, in the upper register, the Son of Man, who is ready to deliver justice to the wicked and the damned. The lower register represents St. John’s vision of the beasts of the Apocalypse. A crowd of worshippers kneels before a sevenheaded beast that exemplifi es the Deadly Sins. Absorbed in prayer, they fail to notice the second beast, who stalks into the center of the print, accompanied by rainclouds shedding torrents of blood. First published in 1498, just before the dawn of a new century, this and the other fourteen woodcuts in Dürer’s celebrated Apocalypse series express a sense of foreboding about a new age and impending doom.