Albrecht Dürer

A good Meder III b impression with strong contrasts and good clarity. With the short scratch on the calf of Hercules' right leg. Trimmed to or just inside the platemark, to the subject in places. According to the accounts of Prodikos and Xenophon, the young Hercules was faced with the choice of taking the arduous path of virtue or the comfortable path of vice. Dürer depicted this moral fable, which had already been illustrated in the Latin version of "The Ship of Fools", not as a dream scene or a verbal duel, but – as in medieval "psychomachia" – as a tangible battle scene (cf. R. Schoch, p. 101). The print is closely related to a drawing Dürer made a few years before, probably as early as 1494, during his first sojourn in Italy. The pen and ink drawing is today in Hamburg (Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 23006). – The corners skilfully repaired, various unobtrusive, repaired defects within the image. A smoothed horizontal centrefold, with restored tears in places, otherwise in good condition.