The Sea Monster (Das Meerwunder)

The Sea Monster is a c. 1498–1500 copper engraving by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer. It shows a voluptuous naked woman riding on the back of a merman, a male creature who is half-man, half-fish. The man wears a beard and antlers, while his lower body is covered in scales. The woman has seemingly been snatched and dragged away from the river bank; her companions are shown scrambling out of the water in panic, raising their arms in protest or lying down weeping. The woman wears an extravagant Milanese headdress and her mouth is open in a cry as she looks back at her friends in the distance. Despite the woman's gaze back at the bank and her open mouth, her relaxed Venus like pose suggests to some critics that she is not overly concerned with her plight.