Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513): Artwork and History

Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Albrecht Dürer’s masterful engraving encourages the viewer to reflect on the inevitability of their mortality. Lurking behind the knight on his muscular warhorse, the skeletal, deteriorating figure of Death sits astride his aging steed and demonstrates the running hourglass of Time. The juxtaposition of the knight and Death suggests the knight’s impending demise. Despite this Christian soldier’s battle-ready appearance, no amount of armor can protect him (and, by proxy, the rest of humanity) from death, though he shows no outward signs of fear or of temptation by the devil, who follows closely behind.

Object facts

• Title: Knight, Death, and the Devil
• Date: 1513
• Artist attribution: Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528
• Place of origin: Germany
• Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: Image/plate: 24.5 × 19 cm (9 11/16 × 7 1/2 in.); Sheet: 25.3 × 19.7 cm (10 × 7 13/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1959.538

Collection credit

Robert Alexander Waller Memorial Fund

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.