Knight, Death, and the Devil ; The Rider (Der Reuter)

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, in plate, lower left: S. 1513. / AD [artist's monogram]

Label

In a mountainous gorge, a knight rides on his powerful horse. Clad in armor with weapons at his side, he appears ready for battle. Yet his foes are not a rival nation. Behind him lurks a demon with a long snout and horns. Although seemingly immune to the Devil’s temptations, the knight rides alongside a figure of Death, wreathed in snakes and astride an emaciated horse. Death holds out an hourglass, reminding the rider of his inevitable demise, which is reinforced by the skull on the ground. The print’s precise meaning has been widely debated. Nevertheless, the grouping of the figures and their setting amidst dark cliffs and spindly trees, suggests a certain anxiety about morality and death. The soldier, a common figure in sixteenth-century German life, becomes the stand-in for these more universal concerns about good, evil, and duty.

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

ARTH 43, Northern Renaissance Art, Jane Carroll, Winter 2012

ARTH 7, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Jane Carroll, Spring 2012

ARTH 7, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Jane Carroll, Spring 2012

HIST 96, Topics in Medieval History, Walter Simons, Winter 2013

REL 37, Animal Rights in Religion, Catherine Randall, Winter 2013

ARTH 7, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Jane Carroll, Spring 2012

REL 37, Animal Rights in Religion, Catherine Randall, Winter 2014

COLT 49, Beasts on the Page, Paul Carranza, Spring 2014

ANTH 7.5, Animals and Humans: A Beastly Experiment in Ethics, Theory & Writing, Laura Ogden, Winter 2015

ARTH 16.17, Rembrandt, Joy Kenseth, Spring 2016

ARTH 16.17, Rembrandt, Joy Kenseth, Spring 2016

ARTH 16.17, Rembrandt, Joy Kenseth, Spring 2016

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Mary Coffey, Joy Kenseth, Winter 2019

SART 27, 28, Printmaking I and II, Sarah Amos, Spring 2019

HIST 96.31, The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages Reconsidered: Art, Artists, and Cultural Change in the ‘Northern Renaissance,’ 1350–1575, Walter Simons, Fall 2019

OSHER, European Manuscript and Print Culture (1300-1600), Daniel Abosso, Fall 2021

SART 20/SART 71, Drawing II/Drawing III, Jack Wilson, Fall 2022

Exhibition History

A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 17-December 20, 1998.

Christ/Antichrist: Religious Imagery in Ernst Fuch's The Victor, Lathrop Gallery Elevator Vestibule, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 2011.

Durer, Rembrandt & Beyond: From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, July 1-August 28, 1994, no. 35.

Faith and Humanism: Engravings and Woodcuts by Albrecht Durer, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, September 14-October 20, 2002; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, January 18-March 9, 2003, number 28.

Forms and Messages: Selections from the Hood Museum of Art Collection, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Art History 2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 19-March 10, 2002.

From Titian to Sargent: Dartmouth Alumni and Friends Collect, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 12-November 1, 1987.

Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16-December 14, 1997.

Ivan Allbright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 23-June 22, 1997.

Making Connections at the Hood Museum of Art, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Art History 2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 20-April 14, 2009.

Master Prints from the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, September 11-November 6, 1977; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, July 2-August 14, 1978, no. 16.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 23-December 9, 2023.

Publication History

Timothy Rub, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Kelly Pask, "A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1998, ill. frontispiece and p.36, listed, p.94, no. 98.

Stacey Sell, Durer, Rembrandt & Beyond: From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1994, p. 44, fig. 49; p. 50, no. 35.

Hilliard T. Goldfarb and Barbara J. MacAdam, From Titian to Sargent: Dartmouth Alumni and Friends Collect, Hanover: Hood Museum of Art, 1987, no. 12, ill.

Diane J. Gingold, Master Prints from the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1977, pp. 40-41, no. 16, ill.

Provenance

Kennedy Galleries, New York; sold to Jean K. and Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, on June 12, 1970; given to present collection, 1997.

Catalogue Raisonne

Bartsch (1803), Vol. VII: 106.98; Meder (1932): 74; Strauss (1973): 71

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