albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, ca. 1498.
Woodcut, 1′ 3 1–4 ″ × 11″. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(gift of Junius S. Morgan, 1919).
Personifications are abstract ideas codified in human form. Here,
Albrecht Dürer represented Death, Famine, War, and Pestilence as four
men on charging horses, each man carrying an identifying attribute.
