An engraving by Albrecht Dürer rescued from a landfill by an 11-year-old antique hunter has sold at auction for £33,390 ($44,800), twice the presale estimate of £10,000 to £20,000 ($13,000 – $26,000).
Knight, Death and the Devil was engraved by Nuremberg printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1513. Dürer named it Reuter (Rider) and it is an allegory of moral virtue as symbolized by the “Christian Knight” who rides steadily past Death on a pale horse holding an hourglass, and a multi-horned, toothy-snouted devil holding a billhook. Amidst a dark, creepy landscape, the knight looks steadfastly forward, allowing Death and Devil no dominion as he proceeds on his quest with his equally steady equine and canine companions.
It was one of three large prints known as the Meisterstiche (master engravings) made by Dürer in 1513 and 1514 that each represent one of the three virtuous spheres of Medieval philosophy. The Reuter represents the moral sphere and the “active life.” Saint Jerome in His Study represents the theological sphere and the “contemplative life.” Melencolia I represents the intellectual sphere. The Meisterstiche prints were enormously influential, the subject of thousands of pages of art historical analysis and the inspiration of many artists.
The print was spotted by the keen eye of the young Matt Winter from Branbrook, Kent, who at 11 years old had already been regularly rummaging for antiques in the local dump for a year. One lucky day, he spotted a woman with a trunk full of things she was about to trash, the Dürer among them. It caught his eye and he asked the lady if he could have it. She was glad someone wanted it and happily let Matt take it.
He put with his growing collection of dumpster-dived antiques and kept it for 13 years. Earlier this year, Matt Winter decided to get it appraised and sent it to Rare Book Auctions, a Staffordshire auction house, for assessment. Jim Spencer, director of Rare Book Auctions, didn’t expect the print to be anything more than a later copy. Dürer’s work was hugely famous in his lifetime and has been copied pretty much non-stop for 500 years. As an expert and appraiser, Spencer has seen many, many copies pass through his hands, but the only originals printed by Dürer himself he’d ever seen were in museums.
As soon as he opened the package, he realized this was something else. He held the print up to the light and recognized the laid paper as the exact type used in Dürer’s time. The quality of the engraving was so superior, the details so meticulously rendered, that he thought it might be an original print. Jim Spencer and his brother and colleague Matty took the print to London where they compared it to the three original examples in the British Museum collection.
“It was the school holidays, so the British Museum was packed with tourists. We could barely move inside. It was one of the greatest privileges of my life to be granted access to the solitude of the Prints & Drawings Study Room where other Dürer engravings in the museum’s collections were carefully laid out for me and Matty to see.
“A research fellow from the United States assisted us with viewing the engravings and comparing their examples with ours. With a magnifying glass, we were able to check that every minuscule line matched perfectly. It confirmed what we had thought and hoped. This was indeed the real deal.
“The research fellow shared a number of academic journals discussing the engraving, Knight, Death and the Devil. One of the most important points related to an incredibly faint scratch across the head of the knight’s steed, which would’ve been accidentally swiped across the surface of the copper plate prior to printing, and would’ve been almost imperceptible. I checked our example and the scratch was present. It disappears on later printings, so this sealed it. It was period and authentic.”
The only downside was that the print was glued to a backing in around 1900, which cut its market value down from $260,000 or so, but even unfortunately mounted it is undeniably the score of a lifetime for the dumpster-diving child history nerd in us all.
Knight, Death and the Devil was purchased by a private collector in Germany, so it will be returning to its homeland.
