The subject of horses and riders preoccupied Dürer for most of his career and features in one of his greatest prints, Knight, Death and the Devil (see lot 21).
In the years leading up to 1504 and the engraving Adam and Eve (lot 16), Dürer had studied and worked extensively on the proportions of the human body. Having mastered the ideal nude, his interest turned once again to horses. While the Small Horse represents the ideal of the small and elegant race horse of oriental origin, the Large Horse (Bartsch 97; Meder 94; Schoch Mende Scherbaum 43) represents the Northern European war horse. Although the central subject of the two prints is clearly the physical appearance of the animal, various mythological and allegorical interpretations have been suggested, including the identification of the Small Horse as Bucephalus, the legendary horse of Alexander the Great.