Internationally known for his art during his lifetime, Dürer can be compared with the giants of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo and Michelangelo, for his equal facility with different forms of artistic expression as well as for his interest in and pursuit of scientific study.

               Dürer's print of The Prodigal Son Amid the Swine shows his skill with engraving. Engraving, a new technique in the fifteenth century, consists of a process in which an image is scratched (engraved) onto a metal plate, inked, and printed onto paper. This technique allowed for mass production -- and thus a large and fairly inexpensive circulation -- of the artist's work.

               The print illustrates a moment from the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-25). Dürer shows the prodigal son not at his joyous homecoming, but at his lowest point, kneeling in a muddy pigsty surrounded by swine on all sides. In a time of humanist thought, it is ironic that Dürer has chosen to depict a man literally on a level with beasts, almost a beast himself.

               Interestingly, the pigsty in which the prodigal son kneels is set in a fifteenth-century German farmyard. The farm buildings are typically Northern in their thatched roofs, steeply pitched roofline, and wooden construction, and the prodigal son is wearing not Biblical robes but modern clothing.

               In using the architecture and costume of his own era, Dürer has put an ancient Biblical tale into the modern vocabulary of his contemporaries. There is a certain resemblance in the prodigal son to the artist's own features and long, curly hair -- could it possibly signify a comparison with the prodigal son on the part of Dürer? That Dürer has illustrated the prodigal son on his knees amidst the swine instead of at his homecoming suggests that his message may not be one of forgiveness but rather of repentance.

Prints