Knight, Death, and the Devil;

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Title	Knight, Death, and the Devil;
File Name	civ metadata CID; Civ Archive 036 correct picture; 98400693.jpg
Copyright Status/Owner	Public Domain; Need to Request
Rights (Patron Usage Instructions)	http://www.lib.byu.edu/genericnote_copyright.html
Course	HUM 202
Lecture Number	4
Professor	Green, Jon D., 1940-
Description	Albrecht Dürer, one of the leading artists during the Germany Renaissance and Reformation, is celebrated for his innovative work in painting, drawing, the graphic arts, and theoretical writings on art. Between 1513 and 1514 he produced three “Master Engravings” that reveal his incredible skill and imagination in the art of engraving. This image presents one of those, Knight, Death and the Devil, and is an excellent example of his unique approach, in which he combined the latest developments of the Italian Renaissance with his own northern artistic heritage. Dürer experimented with the depiction of idealized figures, whose proportions were based on arithmetic ratios, and the knight’s magnificent mount was likely influenced by the many Renaissance equestrian statues the artist observed in Italy. The knight’s control of his powerful steed symbolizes the triumph of higher reason over animal passion. The artist’s northern interest in naturalism and empiricism is evident in his extremely detailed depiction of the knight’s armor and weapons and the surrounding rocks and foliage. Traversing through a foreboding landscape, the elegant rider epitomizes an idealized Christian knight, and Dürer’s subject is probably based on the writings of the contemporary humanist author and theologian, Desiderius Erasmus. In this scene, the knight’s moral virtue enables him to resist the temptations and threats of both a horrific-looking Death, who holds an hourglass in taunting remind of the knight’s mortality, and a horned and hideous Devil who follows behind. Accompanied by his hound, who symbolizes faithfulness, the rider continues on his journey with no acknowledgment of the evil around him. The detailed textures and subtle variation in tonal values attests found in this work rival those accomplished in painting and attest to Dürer’s extraordinary skill in the graphic arts.
Creator	Dürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528
Country	Germany
Geographic Region	Europe
Type	Slide
Platform	Cross-Platform
File Size	2444.032 KB
Genre	Paintings
Category	Art
Keywords	Dürer, Albrecht; Knight, Death and Devil; German art; Northern Renaissance; Etchings; Engravings;
Time Period	Northern Renaissance
Date Range	1500 AD: 1530 AD
Historical Date	1513 AD
Date Original	1513 AD
Date Digital	2005-03-29
Metadata Entry Date	2009-08-11
Quality	High
Contributors	Brigham Young University
Edition	Electronic reproduction;
Format	JPEG
Owning Institution	The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Physical Description	9-5/8 x 7-1/2 in
Publisher Digital	Brigham Young University
Source	A. Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People: as social history of printed pictures (New York: New York Graphic Society, 1971 fig. 269; James Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 2nd ed., revised by Larry Silver and Henry Luttikhuizen (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005), 326-27.
Use Time	0:00:00

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