A saddled-up carrier-horse 1581

Curator: Oh, he looks so tired! Standing there, head bowed… I just want to give him an apple. Editor: We’re looking at “A Saddled-Up Carrier-Horse,” a woodcut created in 1581 by Melchior Lorck. It resides in the Statens Museum for Kunst, here in Copenhagen. It’s incredible the amount of detail Lorck was able to achieve with woodcut techniques. Curator: Detail, yes, but also feeling. That downward curve of his neck—he's not just standing, he's waiting. It makes me think of all the untold stories he's carried, quite literally. What materials crossed his back? Letters of longing? Heavy burdens of taxes? Editor: I immediately see the labor. Think of the material cost, the price and availability of the wood, the craftsman hours for design and the skill to transfer that design and carve. What purpose did prints like this serve? Decoration? Illustration? Ephemera? They would have been handled, displayed and worn away so easily. Curator: Worn away, yes, just like the spirit of that horse, perhaps. Each line etched by Lorck feels like a line of a poem about endurance. He captures the textures wonderfully; the rough blanket, the smooth leather, the coarse hair. Editor: And the lines speak to social position as well. The horse is a working animal, a piece of equipment almost. It’s posed in a way that's almost clinical, displaying its physical form. No romanticism here, it's the economic engine, maybe even an assessment, of a taxable asset? Curator: Hmm, "taxable asset"... You always bring things down to earth, don’t you? I prefer to imagine this horse on a heroic journey, carrying a secret message to a besieged city! Editor: And I consider how this print acted as a prototype, a copy waiting to happen. How the use of the press disseminates images of the real in increasing amounts? But okay… he does have kind eyes. Curator: I knew you'd soften eventually. It is truly remarkable how much character Lorck infused into a simple woodcut, don’t you think? Editor: A technical study, made of reproducible wood, made to illustrate the lifeblood and the wealth extraction, of 16th century European economics. Now that IS heroic. Curator: Well, let's just agree it’s a powerful image that invites a multitude of readings.