The Great Column with the Satyr (Block IV)

Very few complete examples of the Large Column, consisting of four blocks, have survived, as such monumental prints were intended as decorations and usually pasted directly onto walls or large panels, which were eventually destroyed. Schoch, Mende and Scherbaum record a total of nine complete sets in public collections, and even these are mostly composite sets, consisting of impressions from different printing periods. Impressions of single blocks are equally rare and early ones practically unobtainable. The present print is a slightly later impression of the most important, upper section of the column. The watermark dates the sheet to the middle of the 16th century. By this point, the satyr's left arm had cracked and was then replaced with a newly cut plug, which was inserted into the original block shortly after. It lacks the delicacy of the earliest printings, as can be observed by comparing the two examples in the Albertina (inv. no. DG1935/993/4 and /5), the first being Meder's state 1.c, the latter Meder's state 2.b, with more gaps in the lines than the present impression.
Out of stylistic considerations, Meder did not regard the Column as a work of Dürer himself, but included it in his catalogue raisonné of 1932 as 'Dürer School'. This assessment is difficult to uphold, given the very close relation between the woodcut and the drawing with watercolour in the British Museum (museum no. SL,5218.87-89; Winkler 714), which is clearly a preparatory work for the print. Dagmar Eichberger, who had worked specifically on the Dürer's monumental woodcuts, furthermore points to one of the artist's drawings in the margins of the Prayerbook for Maximilian I (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, fol. 19 r., dated circa 1515), which already shows a column of the same principal design (see Schoch Mende Scherbaum no. 247, p. 440-441). It is unconceivable that a subject which had clearly occupied Dürer not once but twice within a period of approximately two years would be the design of another artist or be cut and printed as a woodcut in another workshop.
Schoch, Mende and Scherbaum recorded the following impressions of the present fourth block: Munich (Meder I-a); Nuremberg (M. I-b); Vienna, Berlin (M. I-c); Braunschweig (M. I-d); Vienna, unknown location, formerly Wünsch Collection (M. I-f); Dresden, Nuremberg, Paris (M. II-a); Stuttgart, Vienna, Coburg, Munich (M. II-b). To this we can add another Meder II-b impression at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.