The Monstrous Sow of Landser

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Just as he never saw the rhinoceros he portrayed in another woodcut, Albrecht Dürer never witnessed the female pig born at Landser in Germany in 1496 with two conjoined bodies. He did very likely read about it in a broadsheet with a rudimentary woodcut and a more extensive text description. His surprisingly realistic rendering of how the unseen pig—which died soon after birth—might have looked is similarly convincing but inaccurate. While the engraving does not insist on a religious interpretation, misbirths and other unusual natural occurrences were interpreted as signs during this period, either of the imminent Apocalypse or the need for new crusades against the Turks.

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