A print discovered at an English dump turned out to be a 500-year-old “master engraving” by the premiere Northern Renaissance printmaker Albrecht Dürer. Now, Knight, Death and the Devil is heading to auction, where it is expected to sell for up to $26,000.
The Dürer Print’s Discovery
Since Mat Winter was a child, he has enjoyed searching the local dump for antiques. One afternoon, Winter found an intriguing old print while rummaging through the rubbish. He took it home and stored it in a cupboard, where it stayed for over a decade. This year, Winter finally decided to get the print assessed by Rare Book Auctions, an auction house based in Staffordshire, England.
At the auction house, it took director Jim Spencer months to get around to Winter’s dump discovery. Spencer explained to Artnet News, “When the vendor said it had been rescued from a tip, I didn’t expect much. But when I saw the print, the quality was exceptional and I was straight on a train to the British Museum.” Spencer suspected the piece could be a valuable print by the Northern Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). He noted that the paper’s texture was right for the period, and the “level of detail was breathtaking.”
16th-century Printing Error Confirmed Dürer Print’s Authenticity
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterIn collaboration with prints and drawings experts, Spencer compared the dump discovery with three authentic Dürer prints in the British Museum’s collection. They confirmed the work was Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) and that it was one of Dürer’s three Meisterstiche, or master prints.
A key detail definitively proved Dürer’s authorship: a faint scratch across the head of the knight’s horse. This was a documented mistake that was accidentally traced across the copper plate before the print was made. The scratch also suggests the Dürer print was made sometime in the middle of the plate’s life. In later editions, the scratch is not visible. Unmounted, early prints of Knight, Death and the Devil are considered the most valuable editions.
Albrecht Dürer: Revolutionary Renaissance Printmaker
“As evidenced by the extraordinary quality of this piece, Dürer notably revolutionized the woodcut process,” Spencer said of Knight, Death and the Devil. “His skill with a burin was awe-inspiring.” In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, printmaking was not widely valued as a fine art form. Its use was mostly relegated to the mass production of book illustrations and devotional prints.
Albrecht Dürer, however, saw untapped potential in the medium. Over the course of his career, Dürer produced over 300 fine art prints. He mastered the difficult woodcut and engraving printmaking processes, achieving unprecedented levels of technical detail and visionary artistry in his work. Thanks to Dürer’s innovations and influence, artists across Europe began experimenting with the creative potential of printmaking—and they haven’t stopped in the centuries since.
