Knight, Death and the Devil
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| Knight, Death and the Devil |
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| Albrecht Dürer , 1513 |
| Copper engraving |
| 24.6 × 19 cm |
| State Art Gallery Karlsruhe, I 868 |
The rider , also known as knight, death and devil or knight in spite of (t) death and devil , is a copper engraving by Albrecht Dürer from the year 1513. Together with Melencolia I and St. Jerome in the case, the work is one of the three so-called master engravings of the artist.
Like other engravings by the artist, this picture is characterized by a multitude of symbols from iconography .
Image content and symbolism
- The central figure is a knight in full gear on a horse. Note the fine anatomical elaboration of the horse's body, as it is typical of the Renaissance artists who were interested in the natural sciences and anatomy . Dürer was probably influenced by impressions from his trip to Italy, so he designed the horse according to a self-developed canon of proportions based on Leonardo da Vinci . The rider from Dürer's earlier studies (Fig. Below left) is the direct model for the knight.
- He is accompanied by a dog, which is associated with loyalty and faith ( fides ) and is a motif often used by Dürer. In the lower right part, a lizard associated with zeal for God flees in the opposite direction.
- Two other, less trustworthy companions of the knight are death and the devil . Death is depicted as a bearded, sickly figure with snake hair on an old, rickety horse and with the hourglass as a symbol of transience. The devil is a particularly imaginative creation, a mixture of different animals, so more like a centaur with horns and a spear in hand.
- At the bottom left there is a plaque ( Tabula ansata ) that records the artist's initials and the year the work of art was created. Above it is a skull, another symbol of death.
- The knight seems to be riding on a path in a kind of valley. A castle scene can be seen in the background, which is similar to Nuremberg at the time. The "soffit" that Dürer uses is remarkable. You can see the roots, the knight is almost already buried alive, so closer to death than the expression on his face reveals.
- The knight still sits proudly on his horse, but soon he can bring death and suffer death himself. The skull below in the picture, behind Albrecht Dürer's name plaque, clearly indicates this.
- The knight stands for the vita activa , an active, combative life, which also runs the risk of dying soon in combat. So it could be a " memento mori ", which the skull tries to symbolically express next to the initial tablet of AD with the year.
interpretation
An obvious approach to interpretation is to establish a connection with the other two master stitches, which symbolize different ways of leading a life and attitudes of mind. The knight stands for the vita activa ; he is the noble fighter who stands up to the devil and death. Even if the actual time of chivalry had already expired in Dürer's time, the idea of chivalric ideals remained alive.
But the tragedy is not missing in the picture : The knight rides to death, as his companions and the skull lying on the ground make clear. In a sense, his path leads him into a valley of death - possibly into the valley of death in Jerusalem, into the Hinnom valley . The city in the background could also be seen as Jerusalem, the place of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (the heavenly Jerusalem , the future paradise). So the way of the knight is both doom and salvation.
The composition, these and other possibilities of interpretation give the picture a tension that is characteristic of a great work of art .
In general, however, Dürer's style remains in the medieval tradition of equestrian portrayals, although he tries to ensure that the proportions are exactly what is depicted.
Mathias F. Müller's approach to interpretation sees the master engraving in connection with the fourth renewal period of the Swabian Federation 1512/13, according to which the engraving is to be understood iconographically as an urgent moral warning to the members and as a transitoriness allegory of fame and honor.
miscellaneous
Around 1590 Johann Geminger made a painting with the same title based on Albrecht Dürer's copperplate engraving.
The Kunsthalle Karlsruhe is showing this work (Inv. No. 913) in the exhibition “Déjà-vu? - The art of repetition from Dürer to YouTube ”as an example of“ the diverse forms, functions and motifs of copying ”. She “makes it clear that copies and originals have had different functions over time and have been valued very differently” and “shows ... the new as a recourse to the old, art history as a system of appropriations and derivations”.
The Swiss Hermann Eidenbenz, who then lived in Hamburg and who designed the third series of D-Mark banknotes, intended to reproduce the engraving on the reverse of the one-thousand-D-Mark note , but this proposal was rejected by the Bundesbank.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gave the engraving to his friend Richard Wagner at the time on the occasion of the Christmas celebration in Tribschen.
The engraving is also mentioned in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's crime novel “ Der Verdacht ”. The protagonist Kommissär Bärlach takes on the role of Dürer's knight.
See also
- Saint Jerome in the case
- Melencolia I
- Ritter, Tod und Teufel is also the title of an audio CD published in 1996 by Carlos Perón and Peter Ehrlich with classical texts.
literature
- Anja Grebe, Albrecht Dürer. Artists, Work and Time, Darmstadt 2006.
- Anneliese Hübscher: Knight, Death and the Devil. Symbolism and reflection of reality in Dürer's masterpiece. Urania Universum, Volume 1, 1955, pp. 269-273
- Hartmut Böhme : Albrecht Dürer. Melencolia I, in the labyrinth of interpretation. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1989, ISBN 3-596-23958-3 .
- Fedja Anzelewsky : Albrecht Dürer. Work and effect. Erlangen 1988.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Anna Schiener: Albrecht Dürer . Genius between the Middle Ages and the modern age. Pustet, Regensburg 2011, p. 82 : "... while Dürer's engraving seems to follow very medieval traditions."
- ↑ Mathias F. Müller: The Swabian League and Dürer's masterpiece “Knight, Death and the Devil” as an allegory of transitoriness of fame and honor . Journal of the historical association for Swabia, vol. 110.Wissner, Augsburg 2018, p. 101-107 .
- ↑ Johann Geminger: Knight, Death and the Devil. In: Painting Inv.No. 913. Retrieved January 26, 2017 (around 1590, format 768 x 1024 mm).
- ↑ www.kunsthalle-karlsruhe.de ( Memento from August 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ^ Pia Müller-Tamm, director of the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, quoted from Karlsruhe: The art of repetition. ( Memento from May 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at: nachrichten.rp-online.de , April 27, 2012.
- Jump up ↑ Inflation . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1964, pp. 54-55 ( Online - June 24, 1964 ).
- ↑ Werner Steigmaier: Friedrich Nietzsche for an introduction. Junius Verlag 2011, p. 27.