The Four Horsemen are probably the most reproduced image of the apocalypse ever made, and nearly every version since owes something to this woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. It comes from the same 1498 series as Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon, and it was the most famous of the fifteen.
The scene follows Revelation 6, where the Lamb opens four seals and four riders appear. Dürer lines them up in a stampede. A crowned archer rides first as Conquest, and a swordsman follows as War. The third carries a pair of scales for Famine. Last is Death, an emaciated old man on a bony horse, driving a pitchfork at the crowd. The riders are drawn so tightly together that they read as a single wave.
What gives the print its edge is who gets trampled. A bishop falls into the jaws of a hell-mouth at lower left, and the crowd around him is a mix of ranks. The Church gets no exemption. In 1498 that was a pointed message, and many viewers took it as a comment on the corruption they saw around them.
An angel flies high above the carnage, and this is the only calm in the print. It is easy to miss, and it suggests that someone is watching and keeping score.
Dürer's trick was technical as well as moral. He cut woodblocks with the fineness of an engraver's line, so the horses have weight and the faces have expressions. The same hand later became a draftsman for emperors, but the Horsemen made his name.
Dürer's The Four Horsemen appears on our: