?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
ALBRECHT DÜRER Hercules Conquering the Molionide Twins.
Woodcut, 1496-98. 390x283 mm; 15 3/8x11 1/4 inches, wide margins. Coat-of-arms with initials watermark. A very good Meder III impression with strong contrasts, with the breaks in the border line and with little to no wear in the subject.
According to Bartrum, "The subject of this woodcut has been much debated and certainly must have looked strinkingly unusual when the print was produced. Hercules is represented since his name is inscribed above on the scroll, but it does not show any of the familiar episodes associated with his life or 'labors.' It may represent Hercules slaying the twins Eurytus and Kteatus who overwhelmed all men in their path with their physical strength. Their death was discovered by their mother, Molione, accompanied here by a Fury. The obscure subjects of this and other mythological prints that Dürer made from 1496 to 1505 have always caused speculation." The original wood block used to produce this woodcut is now in the collection of the British Museum, London. Bartsch 127; Meder 238.
