page_title: Knight, Death and the Devil
section_title: Interpretation
hierarchical_section_title: Knight, Death and the Devil / Interpretation
context_page_description: Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer, one of the three Meisterstiche completed during a period when he almost ceased to work in paint or woodcuts to focus on engravings. The image is infused with complex iconography and symbolism, the precise meaning of which has been argued over for centuries.
  An armoured knight, accompanied by his dog, rides through a narrow gorge flanked by a goat-headed devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death's rotting corpse holds an hourglass, a reminder of the shortness of life. The rider moves through the scene looking away from the creatures lurking around him, and appears almost contemptuous of the threats, and is thus often seen as symbol of courage; the knight's armor, the horse which towers in size over the beasts, the oak leaves and the fortress on the mountaintop are symbolic of the resilience of faith, while the knight's plight may represent Christians' earthly journey towards the Kingdom of Heaven.
  The work was mentioned by Giorgio Vasari as one of "several sheets of such excellence that nothing finer can be achieved".
context_section_description: The work was created while Dürer was in the service of the Emperor Maximilian but was not a commission and does not contain an overtly political message. Instead it reaches back to a medieval sense of morality, and is replete with Gothic imagery. The engraving bears similarities in mood and tone to one of Dürer's other great prints Melencolia I. The knight seems resigned, and his facial features are downcast. His gloomy posture is in contrast to the sturdy look of his horse. While his armor may protect him against the surrounding demons, the skull on a stump is held in front of the horse and the fall of the sand held by death in the face of the knight. According to writer Dorothy Getlein, "there is a sense of obsolescence about the knight accompanied by Death and the Devil." The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter noted that the composition followed soon after Dürer's beloved mother died a painful death.
  Austrian 19th-century art historian Moritz Thausing suggested that Dürer had created Knight, Death and the Devil as part of a four-work cycle, each designed to illustrate one of the four temperaments. According to Thausing, the work was intended to represent sanguinity, hence the "S" engraved in the work.
  It is generally believed that the portrayal is a literal, though pointed, celebration of the knight's Christian faith, and also of the ideals of humanism. An alternative interpretation was presented in 1970 by writer Sten Karling, and later by Ursula Meyer, who suggested that the work did not seek to glorify the knight, but instead depicts a "robber knight" (raubritter).  They point to the lack of Christian or religious symbolism in the work and to the fox's tail wrapped on top the knight's lance – in Greek legend the fox's tail was a symbol of greed, cunning and treachery, as well as lust and whoring. However, knights were commonly depicted in contemporary art with a fox tail tied to the tip of their lance. Moreover, the fox tail was a common form of protective amulet.  in this interpretation Death and the Devil are merely the knight's companions on his journey, not omens.
  The work is considered one among three of Dürer's "Meisterstiche" (master prints); along with Saint Jerome in His Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514). In particular, the horse is skillfully rendered in geometric shapes that call to mind Leonardo da Vinci and reflect the Renaissance interest in natural sciences and anatomy.
  Most print rooms with a significant collection will have a copy, and there are many, often late and worn, impressions in private collections.
caption: Knight on horse, a study from c.1512–13.
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