Symbolism of Albrecht Durer’s “Master Engravings”

A detailed Summary of Symbolism of Albrecht Durer’s “Master Engravings”

Albrecht Durer completed the “Master Engravings” in the years 1513 and 1514. With these three engravings (Knight, Death, and Devil, St. Jerome in His Study, and Melencolia I) he reached the high point of his artistic expression and concentration. each print represents a different philosophical perspective on the “worlds” respectively of action, spirit, and intellect. Although Durer himself evidently did not think of the three as a set, He sometimes sold or gave St. Jerome and Melencolia I as a pair.

In the engraving, Knight, Death, and Devil, it appears that the hero (the Knight) is gaining a moral victory over death. (Fig. 1) The Knight has often been interpreted as Erasmus’s sturdy Christian soldier who scoffs at death and the devil as he goes about God’s work in his journey through life. The conception of the ‘Christian soldier’ embodies and ideal of manly virtue which the traditional instincts of the Germanic race, German mysticism and Northern versions of Renaissance ideals all contributed to form.

The Horse is represented in full profile as to show off it’s perfect proportions; it is forcefully modeled so as to give its perfect anatomy and it moves with regulate

The critic, Paul Weber thought the ‘Melancolia’ is grieved because the old theology is still making brutal use of its power, but the visible reason of her grief is that all the arts and accomplishments have failed to satisfy her and bring her happiness. This can only be achieved through faith. The value of Weber’s contribution to the study of Durer does not lie in the interpretation of the figure of ‘Melancolia’, but in the fact that he was the first to make a systematic attempt to explain, by examining the trend of scholastic thought in Durer’s time, the accessories of the ‘Melancolia’ as attributes of the seven free and seven mechanical arts. The little boy on a millstone and scribbling on a tablet represents Grammar, the most elementary of the seven arts; in the mediaeval representations a learner of the alphabet usually accompanies Grammatica. The scales can be explained as an attribute of Rhetoric, the source of advice !

In their interpretation of the ‘Melancolia’ engraving, the two famous biographers of Durer, Thausing (1876) and Springer (1892), both deviate from a firm basis of historical formulation and interpretation imbued with colorless modern spirituality. Thausing has no doubts whatsoever that the woman sunk in gloomy meditation is human reason, in despair because she has reached the limit of achievement! She is the restless, dissatisfied spirit who brings Faust to the point of confessing that we know nothing. Springer, too, is satisfied with the explanation that intellectual striving consumes the peace of the soul and results in deep depression.

Princeton University Press, 1955.

Waetzoldt, Willhelm. Durer and His Times. translated by R.H. Boothroyd. London:

the experience of casually entering a private room rather than of facing an artificially arranged stage.

The St. Jerome differs from the Knight, Death and Devil in that it opposes the ideal the “vita comtemplativa” to that of the vita activa.” But it differs much more emphatically from the Melencolia I in that it opposes a life in the service of God to what may be called a life in competition with god – the peaceful bliss of divine wisdom to the tragic unrest of human creation. While the St. Jerome and the Knight, Death, and Devil illustrate two opposite methods of reaching a common objective,

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1617
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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