Satyr Family,

1505

Dürer’s lifelong preoccupation with the construction and proportions of the human figure is reflected in several engravings featuring male and female nudes, including the celebrated Adam and Eve (1504). Possibly conceived as a pair, these two smaller scenes reflect Dürer’s response to engravings of the same subjects by the Venetian-born artist Jacopo de’ Barbari, who worked in Nuremberg in the early 1500s. Dürer’s extraordinary observation of such textural details as the animal’s fur and antlers is also exemplified in the densely forested setting of Satyr Family; here, the bark and branch of each tree, one of which prominently displays a tablet with Dürer’s monogram and date, is richly differentiated.