St. Eustace

Albrecht Dürer depicted the miraculous moment when the ancient Roman general Placidus converted to Christianity within a lush and carefully observed northern forest. The composition is dominated by the general’s majestic horse and five hunting dogs poised among scrupulously delineated grasses, roots, plants, and rocks. The action, however, occurs between the kneeling general and the immobilized stag standing at right. Placidus converted when the brilliantly illuminated Crucifixion appeared between the deer’s antlers and Jesus spoke to him through the deer. Thereafter, Placidus took the name Eustace. In the 19th century, German artists adopted Dürer as a central figure in German artistic tradition, a key part of the construction of a national identity.