An important engraving by one of the world’s most renowned draftsmen, Albrecht Dürer, fetched $44K at auction last week after being rescued from a garbage dump by an eleven-year-old boy.
The work is a rare print of an image that Dürer first engraved on copper titled Knight, Death and the Devil (1513). One of his three Meisterstiche, or master engravings, the illustration depicts a knight astride a muscular horse, accompanied by a sickly, hourglass-toting figure representing death asw Hades, god of the Underworld, followed by a demented-looking, dragon/goat devil.
Its narrow escape from oblivion owes itself to a chance meeting 13 years ago, in a small countryish town in England, between a kid prone to garbage picking and a woman with a car full of trash.
The print’s owner, 24-year-old Mat Winter, approached Jim Spencer, a dealer in rare books and prints earlier this year saying he’d found it at a local dump more than a decade ago. Naturally, the dealer’s expectations were low.
Jim Spencer, director of Rare Book Auctions, holding the print Hansons Auctioneers
The dealer was on a train to the British Museum. “I opened the package, removed the bubble wrap and staggered back in awe,” says Spencer. “My hands were shaking as I held it up to the light. The laid paper was absolutely right for the period. The quality of the engraving was exceptional beyond words. I knew that only one person could’ve produced something like this—it had to be the hand of Dürer himself.”
As Winter says in the statement, he’s had an eye for antiques since he was 10, when he regularly combed the local dump for treasures.
“One day, a lady had some rubbish in her car, including the print,” Winter says. “I thought it looked interesting and asked if I could have it. She was more than happy to give it to me… It’s been tucked away in a cupboard at home with all my other antique finds for the last 13 years.”
Why is that we read fairly often about valuable art being fished out of a dumpster or picked up for peanuts at flea markets, thrifts stores, and yard sales? How does great art wind up in the trash?
Albrecht “I’m Not Trash I’m Treasure” Dürer, self-portrait in 1498, aged 18.
Sometimes it’s that the previous owner has passed away and others, who don’t know the artwork’s history or worth, just “get rid of it” along with everything else they’ve found themselves suddenly dealing with. For someone who doesn’t know any better, a precious, 500-year-old Renaissance engraving might fall under the category of “pictures of knights on horses and other stuff I don’t care about.” Makes you wish we did a better job of teaching art history in the world.
The work’s symbolism suggests that the noble path is to ignore temptation and remain pure of heart and soul, as life is short and death, followed by God’s judgment, is inevitable. The series of three master engraving it’s part of, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), St. Jerome in His Study (1514), and Melencolia (1514), represent the “three spheres” of human activity in contemporary philosophy: the active, contemplative, and intellectual.
Like most of his northern European peers, Dürer felt it was important to produce artistic allegories for the theological-human condition. However, he was the fist who did so while combining the new ideas about art and humanity coming out of Renaissance Italy.
From two key visits to Italy, Dürer absorbed the new sciences of anatomy, proportion, and perspective. He embraced the new creative frontier of representing “man as he really is” inhabiting the material world of rocks and trees and buildings we’re a part of. Dürer’s great importance is that he was the first non-Italian artist to apply humanistic philosophy and medical as well as theological ideas in his work, of which the print Knight, Death, and the Devil is a prime example. Maybe you have seen his intense self portrait (below).
Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight,” 1500.
Born in Germany in 1471, Dürer is considered “one of the most technically gifted artists of all time,” as the London Times’ Emma Yeomans recently put it. Dürer brought woodcuts printed in large editions into the realm of fine art and the art history canon. He was a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, and his work influenced artists such as Raphael and Titian. Though he also painted, Dürer’s most enduring pieces are his incredibly detailed copper-plate engravings.
“Dürer’s earlier, more Gothic woodcuts were revolutionary,” Spencer said. “But his copper engravings were even more amazing, awe-inspiring, almost superhuman—as this engraving shows.”
Authenticating the work came down to a tiny, faint scratch running through the head of the knight’s horse. According to a report in Artnet, this was the result of a scratch on the copper plate, which was fixed in subsequent print-pullings. The scratch’s presence in Winter’s print proved that it was the real deal.
“It’s the most important print I’ve ever cataloged and offered for sale,” says Spencer. “It was pasted down on a mount, probably around 1900, which will affect the value, but it’s a really nice impression with great clarity and contrasts, which is a massive bonus.”
Dürer painted portraits and religious commissions in oils, but his engravings and his watercolor studies from nature remain the pillars of his fame. Among those naturalist illustrations are his “Young Hare,” the “Great Piece of Turf,” and the beloved “Little Owl.”
Albrecht Dürer, Young Hare, 1502
Young Hare is a 1502 watercolour was painted in 1502 in his workshop. It is acknowledged as a masterpiece of observational art alongside his Great Piece of Turf from the following year.
Albrecht Dürer, Great Piece of Turf, watercolor, 1503. 40.3 cm × 31.1 cm (15+7⁄8 in × 12+1⁄4 in)
The Great Piece of Turf is a study of a seemingly unordered group of wild plants: daisy, dandelion, yarrow, smooth meadow-grass and 10 others. The work is considered one of the masterpieces of Dürer’s realistic nature studies. Though the composition of vegetation in itself is continuous and seemingly disorganized, the blank background provides a contrast to the chaos that imposes a sense of order. For Dürer the work would help bring clear-eyed “scientific” detail to his larger paintings.
But “the Little Owl”!
Albrecht Dürer, The Little Owl, 1508. Awwwww!
Even though Albrecht Dürer’s fame was largely built on his prints and graphic style, his got by financially with commissions of paintings of religious subjects and portraits, works that remain held in high esteem for their draftsmanship and use of color.
And if you fancy a print of his self-portrait “with furball,” check out at the FatCat Art Shop and order yourself a Fine Art Print. Have to admit, once you’ve seen the “new and improved” print (above), poor Dürer sure looks lonely in the original.
Interested in learning the “lost art” techniques of Old Master drawing? There’s a video for that.
However, if pet portraits are more your style, check out Shelley Prior’s “Pet Portraits in Watercolor.”
Seems a bargain, considering Southebey’s listing last December for the much smaller “Coast of Arms with Skull” which had an estimate of between $150K and $250K.
Who doesn’t admire Durer’s skill – and it’s not just technical skill alone that we admire. The entire conception of each of his works, especially the engravings, is unique to him. You can tell on sight that a print is by Durer (or done in his style by one of his bazillion imitators); his personality comes out in his “hand,” as they call the “signature” of the
Speaking of signatures, one of the things I’ve always loved about Durer is how he signed his works. He used a monogram created from the beginning letters of his first and
last name. I don’t know exactly what it is, but something about it fascinates me.
