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Knight, Death and the Devil

Albrecht Dürer · 1513

An engraving by Dürer showing an armored knight riding steadfastly past figures of death and the devil, read as a symbol of Christian faith.

Dürer engraved this master print, one of his three most celebrated and iconographically complex works.

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Black and white engraving of an armored knight on a horse riding through a forest path, accompanied by a dog. Behind him a grotesque horned devil and a skeletal figure with an hourglass. A skull lies on the ground.
Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513. Kupferstichkabinett Berlin.

About this source

What it is

This is an engraving made by Albrecht Dürer in 1513, now held by the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. It is one of his three Meisterstiche, or master prints, made during a period when he focused almost entirely on engraving.

Why it matters

The image shows an armored knight on horseback, accompanied by his dog, riding through a menacing landscape past a goat-headed devil and a skeletal figure of death holding an hourglass. Many scholars connect it to Erasmus's writings on the ideal Christian knight who faces worldly dangers unafraid. The print later had a long afterlife, being referenced by later writers and even used, much later, for political propaganda unrelated to Dürer's intentions.

Look closer

  • Why does the knight look straight ahead instead of at the threatening figures beside him?
  • What do the dog, the hourglass and the skull suggest about the ideas Dürer wanted to convey?
  • How might this image have been understood differently by people in 1513 compared with later centuries?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Albrecht Dürer on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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