A Templar knight rides his horse through an epic woodcut landscape, with an old astronomical chart and a half moon in the sky, a crumbling bridge ruin on the left and a distant castle on a mountain to the right.
Product description
The Knight on Horseback T-shirt shows a Templar in the saddle, riding through a wide hill country. Captured like a colored page from an old book of maps. The rider sits upright on a brown horse that lifts one foreleg, as if it were pausing mid-stride. Over his chest he wears a light surcoat with a red cross pattee. On top of it lies an orange-red cloak that streams out behind him in the wind. The great helm with its narrow eye slit leaves the face in darkness. The greaves and the sword at his side are rendered in fine hatching. The kind a copperplate engraver draws with the needle.
The sky above him is no ordinary cloud cover, but a small study of the heavens in its own right. A large crescent moon stands in the middle, two smaller ones float at the edges. Along with them a radiant sun sign and a compass rose with its rays. Concentric circles carry stylized symbols of the kind you find on astronomical charts. And curved bands of cloud draw across the picture. In the upper left lies a drawn group of islands with small mountains. Just as cartographers once set unknown land at the edge of their sheets.
The landscape all around tells of the road the rider already has behind him and of the one still ahead of him. On the left stands a crumbling stone arch, beside it a smaller gateway through which you look into the distance. Far in the back a castle sits on a hill, hardly more than a silhouette. In the upper right, by contrast, a great fortress with towers and flying banners rises on a cliff. The goal of this leg of the journey, or a waypoint at the edge of the map. The ground in the foreground is held in warm rust tones, rocky and threaded with paths.
On the back the story continues, though there as a richly framed panel. A broad border encloses the field. Compass roses sit in three corners; in the fourth, at the upper right, a shield with a cross and two fleurs-de-lis. Along the sides hang heraldic shields with lily vines as well as with a lion and a cross. At the top and at the bottom one shield each with the cross pattee, and between them fine ornaments wind along. Inside, on the left, stands a tall stone cross on a plinth. Three riders have halted in front of it, two of them in the foreground seen from behind. One in a red cloak, one in a light one, a third slightly smaller behind them. On the right a small chapel opens up with a columned portal and a stair. Behind it mountains rise, along with slender cypresses and quiet clouds.
The colors deliberately hold back. Sand beige and cream white meet rust brown and a muted blue gray. So that the whole motif looks as if it had darkened over time, without ever becoming restless. The hatching gives every surface a fine texture that looks engraved up close. And from a few steps away melts into one closed scene. Front and back clearly belong together and read like two pages of the same open volume.
Look more closely and you will find a small order of its own in the marginal signs. The compass roses on the back pick up the rose from the sky on the front. The coats of arms set a sign of origin and rank against the ride. And the cypresses beside the chapel give the scene a moment of quiet after the long road. This creates the impression of having two legs of the same journey in front of you. Recorded by the hand of a draftsman who filled every field with care.
The image reaches generously across the front and the back without crowding the collar or the seams. If you like history, if you are taken with old maps and celestial signs, or if you are simply looking for a quiet, narrative motif, you will find a shirt here. One that still gives up another small detail on the second look. At Isakum the motif is drawn so that the many details stay cleanly legible in print as well. From the eye slit of the helm to the finest turn of the compass rose.
