Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was one of the most versatile artists of the Renaissance and one of the greatest German painters of all time. Most people today know of him only from his meticulously detailed drawing known as Praying Hands, prints of which are usually seen for sale in a Christian bookstore or hanging on the wall of a relative’s living room. Yet, throughout his life Dürer produced a magnificent collection of art, and his broad output of paintings, drawings, etchings, and woodcuts deserve to be as well known today as they were five hundred years ago.
Dürer was born into an extraordinary period of history. During his lifetime, Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas, Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper, and Martin Luther nailed the 95 Thesis to the church door in Wittenberg. Trained as an artist from an early age, he showed talent in early works like an impressive self-portrait drawn at the age of 13 (one of the first “selfies”?). As he grew older, he became proficient in a variety of genres, including portraits, landscapes and images of wildlife, and Bible scenes. He eventually came to serve in the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.
The engraving on this page, which Dürer originally referred to simply as The Rider, has come to be known by a title based on the characters depicted in it: Knight, Death, and the Devil. In an allegory similar to John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a solitary knight, clad in armor and riding on horseback, passes through a dark valley. Two figures confront him. Death, a grim, skeletal creature, holds up an hourglass to remind the knight of his mortality. Slightly behind him, the devil—revealed in all his absurdity as a strange, pig-snouted beast—tries to antagonize the knight with temptations. In the knight’s expression we sense his determination: unyielding and unintimidated, he journeys on, looking neither to the right nor to the left, pursuing his road to the city on the hill, accompanied by his faithful canine companion seen in the bottom right.
Knight, Death, and the Devil draws from a variety of biblical images. The dark wood and craggy rocks appear as “the valley of the shadow of death” through which the knight passes fearlessly (Ps. 23:4; Heb. 2:14-15). He is the “good soldier” (2 Tim. 2:3-4) who wears the armor of God (Eph. 6:10-17), resisting the devil and standing firm in the faith (1 Pet. 5:8-9).
Life’s journey may takes us down difficult paths, but Dürer’s knight reminds us how to remain steadfast in the presence of adversity. Encouraged by God’s presence and emboldened by God’s faithfulness, he journeys onward, eagerly awaiting what lies ahead.
Throughout his lifetime, Dürer produced hundreds of works of art. Here’s a few more to check out: Penitent Saint Jerome (1497), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (part of his 1498 series of woodcuts based on the Book of Revelation), Self Portrait in a Fur Coat (1500), Young Hare (1502), Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman (1505), Saint Jerome in His Cell (1514), Melencolia I (1514), Rhinoceros (1515), and Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I (1519).