Engraving Knight Death and the Devil by Albrecht Dürer – a mysterious message from the depths of centuries

Knight Death and the Devil is one of three master engravings created by Albrecht Dürer in 1513. In the center of the composition is depicted a rider dressed in armor and armor on a muscular warhorse. His visor is raised, his gaze is fixed forward. In his right hand, he tightly clutches a spear adorned with a fox tail, with his left hand he holds a bridle. A dog runs nearby – a true friend and helper.

The stern appearance of the main character is illuminated by the light of reason and contrasts sharply with the environment. To the right of the protagonist, there is Death, saddling an exhausted nag. Fixing her gaze on the knight, she points to the running hourglass of time.

A mocking Devil with a wolf’s muzzle, a sharp horn and a halberd relentlessly keeps on behind. A lizard scurries below – a harbinger of danger. The feeling of doom in the work filled with allegories is enhanced by the oppressive landscape. The rocky landscape with fragile, dead trees and roots sticking out of the ground causes a feeling of numbness.

And the skull, located on the left side of the stump, right above the author’s monogram plate, becomes another symbol of death. Only the castle on a light background of the distant plan, similar to Nuremberg of that time, gives hope for a successful outcome. But the road to it is difficult and winding.

Title of the painting: Knight death and the devil
Author: Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528).
Year of writing: 1513
Size: 24.5 x 19.1 cm.
Style: Renaissance.
Genre: Allegorical scene.
Technique: Engraving.
Material: Copper.
Location: Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA.

Albrecht Dürer is an outstanding German artist and thinker of the late 15th – early 16th centuries.

In his work, he combined the search of his predecessors with the views of his contemporaries and became the founder of a new stage in the development of German art. Paintings, engravings and graphics of the master amaze with contrasts. The engraving “Knight, Death and the Devil”, also known under the author’s title “Horseman”, Dürer completed in 1513. It became the first of three engravings on copper that went down in history as master engravings.

A year later, “Saint Jerome in the cell” and “Melancholia” were created. Not connected by a single plot, the works in the strict sense are not a trilogy. The engravings brilliantly combined the brilliant thoughts of the master with a magnificent technique of execution, unprecedented before.

In The Horseman, Dürer embodied moral virtue. In the unshakable movement forward, the steady landing of the knight. His character, like the images of heroic equestrian portraits, is imperturbable and true to his mission. The will shown in the knight goes against all fears. Honor and courage are demonstrated by the absence of doubt and absolute contempt for danger.

In the role of a knight in the engraving, in fact, each of us is encrypted. If a person is stable in his movement, then he will certainly become what he wants. But if it falters, then there will always be ghosts and sinister attributes nearby to destroy it. It is no coincidence that Dürer depicted a castle, a kind of mountain world, as the highest goal, right above the horseman’s head.