“Knight, Death and the Devil” – the first engraving in the famous series “Three Workshops” engravings on copper.
A gloomy forest is depicted. This can be imagined in a terrible dream. Naked trunks, broken prickly boughs, a tree barely resting on screes with bare roots. Durer is fond of foliage, the rustle of branches, flowering, but he knows how frightening nature can be, and creates on this engraving a damned forest.
On the stony path, through which the stunted grass hardly breaks through, the skull is lying. On the trail on a slowly walking beautiful horse rides rider. He is chained in armor and armed. The visor on the helmet is raised. The elderly face is calm and severe. The look is directed forward. Death rides out of the forest on a skinny nag. The horse is not forged, it has a rope harness, a bell on its neck. Death extends the horseman an hourglass – a symbol of the brevity of human life. However, the rider does not dignify Death with a glance. And the devil with the boar’s muzzle, the ram’s horns, the wings of the bat, the rider has already passed and is moving on without turning around.
It seems that his horse is walking slowly, but the dog, who does not want to lag behind the master, has to flee. The step of the horse, the movement of the rider is uncontrollable. Neither Death, nor the Devil will not frighten, will not stop him.
A stern, middle-aged warrior moving toward an unknown goal against the background of a wild rocky landscape, despite the threats of Death and the Devil following him, is inspired by the treatise of Erasmus of Rotterdam “The Guide of a Christian Warrior” and embodies the moral readiness to follow the chosen path.
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