Albrecht Duer's The Knight, Death, and Devil Art Interpretation

For my final I am choosing to write about Albrecht Durer, a German painter, mathematician, engraver, and theorist who was originally from Nuremberg Germany. He is probably most famous for his work doing engravings which were done on wood and on copper and he is considered one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance. He also did some work with water colors throughout his career and painted many landscapes, this gave him credit as being one of the first European painters to do landscapes.

My focus for this final will be mainly on his engraving of the “Knight, Death, and Devil” that was done on copper and then used to make many printings of. The overall design of the piece is very ornate with many lines and curves used to detail the subject in the engraving. There are very many finely cut details, and shapes of all sizes and this gives the original engraving a texture to it. This texture is then transferred over to the paper when it is printed on. There are no real colors to the printed copies other than black with many shades of grey, which I think helps add to the mood of the picture. Also there does not seem to be any great emphasis on any one particular part of the picture but rather the whole piece has a great deal of interest. This not to say there is no definite subject, because the Knight on the horse is obviously that, but the maker did put a great amount of time to each piece of the picture and made it interesting to the viewer. There are a lot of emotions that I believe are associated with this engraving, not just for me as a viewer but I imagine for the maker as well. The first I feel is fear, and I imagine this is a common and purposeful theme to the picture, as well as a sense of urgency. The Knight is riding through a valley on a horse with Death right next time him holding an hour glass. That hour glass, I believe, is there to symbolize that there is an end to the Knight’s life and that he will not live forever. There is