The small horizontal format shows a frontally depicted horse's head in the central axis flanked by two half-figures whose bodies end in an acanthus scroll. The male figure on the left is shown in its back view, while the female figure on the right is seen from the front. With both hands they each clasp a club and lunge to strike. The rotation of the upper body and the arm posture fit axially symmetrically into the leaf-filling tendril. Two incomplete skulls fill the lower corners of the engraving.
The present sheet is one of four copper engravings in the Haupt collection attributed to the Master of the Horse Heads. Nothing is known about the artist behind this auxiliary name. His origins are assumed to be either in the Netherlands or in Westphalia, and the creation of the approximately 20 sheets now attributed to him is dated to the 1st third of the 16th century.
The artist is counted among the so-called German Little Masters, whose works are distinguished not only by the frequently chosen small format, but also by a common formal language, and in which secular, allegorical, mythological subjects or genre scenes are often depicted. Ornament also becomes an independent pictorial theme. Imaginative and playful, the artists used their knowledge of the Italian Renaissance and the antique forms that had been handed down to them. In contrast to the better-known figures assigned to the group, such as the brothers Barthel and Sebald Beham, Heinrich Aldegrever or Georg Pencz, only ornamental engravings are known of the Master of the Horse Heads. His slightly brittle style is characterised by a very fine line. He almost exclusively used parallel hatching to model his forms. The horse heads, which appear in several of his prints – also as skulls – are a unique feature and thus gave the artist his name.
Albrecht Haupt compiled his collection of prints in those years when the ornamental engraving was first systematically sifted through the collections, detached from the function of the ornament as decorum of architecture, and received its first scientific classification. Thus, the print was obviously still a rarity when it found its way into the Albrecht Haupt collection. Presumably not without pride, he noted on the support "Sonst nur noch in Dresden". A later addition by another hand added "u. Berlin"; today – after numerous collections of ornamental engravings have been indexed and are also available online – the list can be supplemented with further copies in Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), London (V&A) and Vienna (MAK).
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