L'Apocalypse (Edition allemande) La Prostituée de Babylone (Bartsch 73), GDUT4126

A woman dressed in opulent 15th-century attire sits atop a monstrous beast with seven heads and ten horns, holding aloft a decorative cup. A group of men, including a king and a monk, gesture toward her in adoration or conversation, while the city of Babylon burns in the far background. Above the scene, an angel points toward the destruction as a celestial army of knights emerges from the clouds.

This work is a defining example of late medieval eschatology, capturing the intense apocalyptic anxiety felt in Europe as the year 1500 approached. Dürer’s visualization of these prophecies provided a definitive iconographic language for subsequent visionary and prophetic literature in the Western esoteric tradition.