Four Naked Women

Albrecht Dürer

National Gallery of Art

Printed with fine black lines against cream-white paper, four nude, curvy women stand in a loose circle enclosed within an interior space, as a demon peeks around an opening along the left edge of this vertical engraving. The women nearly fill the composition and the room they occupy. Three of the women stand in a line in front of us so they span the foreground. The women to the left and center stand with their backs to us. The woman to our right and the woman on the far side of the circle face us. Their hair is bound up in headdresses, scarves, or veils. The woman to our right holds a swath of drapery across her hips and it cascades to the floor near a skull and long bone resting at their feet. An arched opening to the right and a squared opening to the left are both dark. An orb hangs above the group at the upper center, and it is inscribed with the letters “OGH” and the date, "1497." The demon peeking from the shadows along the left edge has a snout like a lion, and its gaping jaws reveal sharp teeth and a long tongue. It clutches a pair of thin sticks in one paw and flames flare up behind it. The contours of the women and the room are shaded with long, parallel strokes and crosshatching. A monogram with a capital D tucked between the legs of a wide, upper case A is inscribed at the bottom center of the sheet.