Nemesis (B. 77; M., Holl. 72; S.M.S 33)

Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, with wings and standing on a ball, glides majestically over an alpine landscape, which - depicted in tiny detail - lies far underneath. In her hands she holds a bridle and a cup, her instruments to punish and restrain the proud and reward the just. As Panofsky's iconological studies have demonstrated, these attributes can only have been derived from the poem Manto by the Tuscan poet Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), and it may have been through Willibald Pirckheimer that Dürer, who did not read Latin himself, knew this particular literary source. The mountain landscape has been identified as a view of the village of Klausen in the Eisack valley, one of the few unambiguously identifiable locations in Dürer's printed oeuvre.
Impressions of the first state, before the accidental scratch on the bridge, such as the present one, are very rare. Schoch, Mende and Scherbaum record only five impressions in public collections.