Das Meerwunder (The Sea Monster)

Dürer titled this print himself, but the exact narrative depicted remains unclear. Judging from the hysterical gesturing of the figure on the shore, the woman appears to have been carried off by an elderly but virile triton. The abduction of women by water-gods is one of the oldest subjects in mythology and the arts, but the woman’s calmness in this print contradicts traditional representations and does not correlate with any single literary or visual source. Instead, Dürer has created an original interpretation, one that employs hyper-realistic detail in the landscape and the figures’ appearances to create a believable, but entirely fictional, account of a familiar subject.