As the year 1500 approached, Christians feared the approach of the "last days," as foretold in the Biblical Book of Revelation and prophesied by holy men such as Savanarola and Joachim of Fiore. The German artist Albrecht Dürer, a master of the new print medium, capitalized on this cultural obsession, and, in the first documented instance of artistic entrepreneurship, published and marketed his vibrant series of woodcut prints himself. These works on paper capture the drama of the end of the world as never before, as near mass hysteria gripped Europe in the waning years of the 15thcentury. Dürer’s brilliant gamble made him famous across all of Europe.