Compare and Contrast Durer's Prints of Knight, Death, Devil Vs. Melancholia Essay

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Albrecht Durer

Knight, Death, and the Devil vs. Melencolia I

Albrecht Durer was a German artists from Nuremberg who lived from 1471-1528. He is considered to be the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance, and his work included paintings, prints, and engravings. Although they were both copper engravings, and created within a year of each other, Durer's Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513) and his Melencolia I (1514) were two very different types of art consisting of two entirely different subjects: one is primarily religious in nature while the other represents intellect and knowledge.

Knight, Death, and the Devil is a religious-themed copper engraving consisting of a Christian Knight riding along flanked by an image of the Devil and Death riding on a pale horse. The Knight is depicted as traveling through the valley of the shadow of death and fearing no evil. This is symbolic of Psalm 23 which the engraving seems to be depicting. While both figures are threatening the Knight, he seems to be oblivious to the danger, protected by his armor of faith. Death's pale horse also seems to bow before the magnificence of the Knight, who's proportions come from DaVinci's canon of proportions.

Durer's Knight, Death, and the Devil is very much in the Gothic style, with many of the forms blending into each other.

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For a such a small work of art, only 24.6 cm by 19 cm, it contains a great deal of detail. There is a castle in the background representing God, while the dog is symbolic of faith and the lizard represents religious zeal. The engraving makes great use of the Italian artistic technique known as Chiaroscuro, or "light-dark," with it's complex use of contrast between light and dark. The background is a dark, gothic-style tangle of trees, branches, and hillside, while death is represented as a bright figure on a bright horse. The knight contains a mixture of light and dark creating a well defined figure staring straight ahead, undaunted by either Death or the Devil.

While Knight, Death, and the Devil was created in the Gothic Style, containing primarily religious subjects and symbolism, Durer's Melencolia I is a representation of the Renaissance ideas of the reason and knowledge. The figure in the copper engraving is "Melencolia I," (as the inscription declares) representing what is generally thought to be depression, or the melancholy which often plagues artists. The engraving is filled with Renaissance symbolism including geometric instruments, a 4x4 magic square, an hourglass, a balance, and a truncated rhombohedra, known as "Durer's solid." Many of….....

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