The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Albrecht Dürer · an engraving, burin on copper, printed on paper · a single sheet, dated 1513 on a tablet at the lower left, the date preceded by the letter S and joined by the monogram AD · one of three large engravings of 1513 and 1514, with Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in his Study · Nuremberg · the unit scored is the engraving as an edition: the image as printed from Dürer’s plate, judged in good early impressions, no single impression being the work
Mode
Allegorical engraving in procession; one rider’s journey given in emblem and in observation at once
Mythos
The soul’s passage through the valley of shadow between death and the tempter; the Christian soldier armoured in faith
Phase
One step of a walk, the road implied before and after; cut and dated in Nuremberg in 1513, the year before Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in his Study
Presentation
Engraving, burin on copper, printed in black on paper; a single sheet held in the hand; judged in good early impressions
Register
Grave and still at the centre, grotesque at the margins; dread held off by an even pace
Scale
A lizard to a castle on a height; one rider, one road, one gorge
Governing Proposition
An armoured knight rides at a walk through a rocky gorge toward a castle on a height, Death beside him holding up an hourglass to his face and a horned devil at his back, and he looks at neither. The wager of the print is that constancy, the soul going forward through mortality and temptation without turning its head, can be shown as a surface, the hardness and shine of cut steel against the broken lines of rot, on a copper plate small enough to be printed many times and held in the hand.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The sheet is an engraving. Albrecht Dürer, working in Nuremberg, cut the design with the burin into a copper plate, and the work is the image that plate prints, judged in the good early impressions in which its whole range can be read. It is dated on the plate, 1513. With Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in his Study, both of the following year, it is one of three large engravings that later writers group as the Meisterstiche, and of the three it is the one with a journey in it. No single impression is the work; the many that survive in the major print rooms are its witnesses. It was made to be printed many times, sold and held: a sheet small enough for the hand, and read close.
An armoured knight rides in profile from left to right on a heavy horse at a walking pace, a lance over his shoulder, a dog running beneath the horse. At the left, on a starved horse, rides Death, crowned and wound with snakes, holding up an hourglass to the knight. Behind the rider comes a horned devil with a beast’s snout, carrying a pike or halberd. A skull lies on a stone or stump at the lower left, and below it a lizard runs the other way. The riders move through a rocky gorge among bare and leafing trees, and in the upper part of the field a castle stands on a high hill. That is the whole cast: one knight, Death, the Devil, two horses, a dog, a lizard and a skull.
Beside the skull stands a tablet. It bears the date, 1513, preceded by the letter S, and Dürer’s monogram, AD. What the S stands for has not been settled. The tablet is set in the same ground as the skull, so that the date and the maker’s mark lie on the knight’s road among the things that road leaves behind. The field is crowded: rock, root and branch press in on both sides and leave the riders a narrow passage. Nothing happens in it but a walk. The horse sets down one hoof and lifts another, Death holds up his glass, the Devil follows at the back, and the knight looks ahead.
Movement II
The hinge of the plate is the hourglass. Death holds it up into the knight’s face, level with his eye, and the knight does not look at it. He does not look at the Devil either. His eyes go forward along the road, and the calm of his profile is what the print means. Turn that head a few degrees toward the glass and the sheet becomes another picture, a man overtaken; as it stands it is a man going on. Death is half rotted, crowned and wound with snakes, on a horse as starved as he is; the Devil behind has a beast’s snout and a nightmare head. Neither is answered. The disclosure is made entirely by image, and it holds without a word of commentary.
What it discloses can be stated: constancy, the soul that goes forward through mortality and temptation without turning its head. That is a meaning, not a mood, and it is true of how people keep on. The pace carries it as much as the face. The horse lifts a foreleg at an even walk, neither shying nor hurrying, and that measured step runs through the whole procession, against which Death and the Devil are set as drags. The light falls from the left on polished steel, so that the rider stands out in light while the figures that crowd him are cut into the dark of the gorge. The stance is shown as a surface: hardness and shine.
The print also discloses its own doubt. The knight’s face is hard and closed, and his armour is the equipment of a class whose time was passing. The reading of him as a robber knight rather than a Christian soldier has never been quite dismissed, and the doubt is part of what the sheet shows: from outside, constancy and obduracy look alike. But the dispute is about who the man is, not about what the image shows, which is a man going forward unmoved past death. The limit is breadth. What is disclosed is a single stance, given in emblem, not the social and inner world that the widest disclosures open. The print holds one truth and holds it hard.
Movement III
The archetype is not summoned here; it is the structure. A rider passes through a valley of shadow between Death and the Devil toward a stronghold on a height, and every element of the composition is that journey. The procession runs left to right. The gorge is the narrow way, walled by rock and root. The skull at the lower left is what lies behind, and the castle in the upper field is where the road ends. Death stands beside the road and the tempter follows at the back. The twenty-third psalm is the obvious ground. The Christian soldier of Ephesians, armoured in faith, is realised here in steel, and so is the soldier of Erasmus’s Handbook of the Christian Soldier of 1503, whether or not Dürer read it.
And it stays particular. This is a German knight of 1513 in the armour of his day, on a real horse built to a studied proportion, with a real dog at its feet. The figures are emblems and individuals at once: the rider is the soul and a man, and the horse is the soul’s bearer and an animal whose weight and hide the burin has measured. Behind the composition lie two inheritances: the northern devotional and allegorical print, with the Ars moriendi, the dance of death and the knight of the woodcut; and the Italian monumental horse. Dürer fuses them, setting a proportioned horse and a classical calm in a Gothic gorge among northern demons. The fusion is his own. The stake, though, had been placed before, in the Apocalypse woodcuts and the Adam and Eve of 1504.
Take the figures away one at a time and the plate shows how tightly it is built. The knight cannot go; he is the work. Death and the Devil cannot go, since the title names them and without them the rider is a portrait of armour. The skull and the tablet hold the road behind, the castle gives it an end, and the gorge confines it. Some things could go. The dog, the lizard and part of the vegetation are emblems added to the scheme, of zeal, of the creeping thing, of the dead and the leafing wood, and the eye could lose one of them without feeling a gap. They are tied in by the hatching that governs everything. In 1513 Dürer was the most famous printmaker in Europe, and the plate is the culmination of a proven path more than a wager against it.
Movement IV
Every surface is its own system of line. The steel is swelling and tapering parallels, laid so that the armour shines. The horse’s musculature is curved cross-hatching that follows the turn of the body. The rot of Death’s face and the Devil’s hide are flicked and broken strokes. The gorge is dense tonal fields, so that the knight stands out in light against them. All of it is cut with one tool into one plate, and the brightest light on the sheet is bare paper. The horse is constructed to a studied proportion and the armour to its period. This is the burin at the summit of what it could do as it stood, and the making is load-bearing: the meaning is carried by the contrast of cuts.
The moral contrast is a contrast of surfaces. Constancy is hardness and shine, cut in clean continuous lines; corruption is frayed, its hatching broken. In paint the armour would become colour and the dread would lose its graphic sharpness; in a large format the intimacy of a meditation held in the hand would go. A print is also a multiplied and private object, and a devotion meant for many single readers suits it. The form has limits of its own. The frieze in profile is a composition that painting and relief had used for centuries, and the emblem programme can be told in words, and has been. The lower field is slightly crowded, and the knight’s set profile has a stiffness that reads as heraldic.
One law holds the sheet from edge to edge: a single light from the left, a single system of engraved line, a single scale of tone from white paper to the densest cross-hatching, and a single direction of movement. The castle on the height and the lizard at the bottom edge, the steel and the rotting flesh, are made by the same burin and live in the same air. The law holds across a wide range, heroic, grotesque, emblematic and observed, though the observed horse and the fantastic Devil are joined rather than fused, and the lower left reads as an emblem shelf. Elevation comes from contrast, terror at the margins and grandeur at the centre, and it rises again in the castle on its hill. But the sheet is held in the hand and read close, and much of its effect is the pleasure of intricacy rather than transport.
Movement V
Five centuries of reading have not settled the plate. The knight has been taken for the Christian soldier, for a stoic, for a robber knight, for a friend of Dürer’s, for Savonarola and for an ideal. The S before the date is unexplained; the dog and the lizard are argued; whether the knight sees Death at all is argued. Panofsky made the sheet one leg of a triad with Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in his Study, and the triad has itself been questioned. Nietzsche took the knight as an image of hope without hope. In the twentieth century the print was read, against its own sense, as a German heroic emblem, and that reading has become an object of study in its turn. Under the glass the hatching yields at every scale, and return does not exhaust it.
With its two companions the plate is where engraving became capable of the tonal and tactile range of painting. It showed that a small sheet, printed many times, could carry a grave and complex meditation at the height of a painted altarpiece, and that changed what a print could be. The three plates were models of the engraver’s craft for centuries. The image passed into German letters and thought, through Nietzsche and Thomas Mann, and it was taken up in nationalist imagery that turned it from its sense. The reach is wide but partly diffuse: much of the redirection belongs to Dürer’s output as a whole and to the other two plates, and is not this sheet’s alone.
The image has been in view since 1513, collected, copied and reproduced without a break. It survives in many impressions from Dürer’s lifetime, and its form is whole in the good ones; paper and ink are fragile, impressions vary, late and worn sheets weaken it, and the fate of the copper plate is not established, but enough early impressions stand for the work as made to be seen. On one sheet it holds the soul, death, evil, the sacred, nature, a social class and time, all on one road. It holds no family, no labour, no state and no history beyond an allegory of the single soul. The glass is still held up level with the rider’s eye, the castle still stands on its hill, and the knight still looks ahead.
Act III · The Twelve
Take the figures away one by one. The knight is the work. Death and the Devil cannot go, for the title names them, and without them the rider is a portrait of armour. The hourglass, held up into his face and unregarded, is the hinge of the whole. The skull at the lower left is the road behind him, and the tablet beside it sets the date and the maker in the same ground. The gorge confines him and the castle gives the road its end. The dog, the lizard and some of the vegetation are emblems added to the scheme, and the eye could lose one without feeling a gap. Tight, short of the top.
Score: 8.6 / 10
What the print brings into the open can be stated: constancy, the soul going forward through mortality and temptation without turning its head. The knight looks at neither the hourglass nor the Devil; he looks ahead, and his calm is the meaning. The disclosure is made wholly by image, without a word, and it holds as a truth about how a person keeps on. It discloses its own doubt too: the face hard and closed, and the reading of him as a robber knight never quite dismissed. A meaning, not a mood, but given in emblem: one stance, not an articulated world. Held at the gate.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The elevation is dread and stillness held together. Death’s half rotted face and snaky crown, the hourglass at the knight’s eye, the Devil’s nightmare head, the closing gorge; and at the centre the horse lifting a hoof at an even walk and the rider’s profile unmoved. The height comes from the contrast, terror at the margins and grandeur in the middle, with the light on polished steel, and it rises more than once, in the castle on the far height as well as in the encounter. The cost is scale and medium: a sheet held in the hand and read close does not overwhelm, and much of its effect is the pleasure of intricacy rather than transport.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The archetype is not summoned; it is the structure. A rider passes through a valley of shadow between Death and the Devil toward a stronghold on a hill, and every element is that journey: the procession, the gorge as the narrow way, the skull as what lies behind, the castle as the end, Death beside the road and the tempter at the back. The Christian soldier of Ephesians, armoured in faith, and the soldier of Erasmus’s Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1503), whether or not Dürer read it, are realised, not alluded to. And it stays particular: a German knight of 1513 in the armour of his day, on a real horse built to proportion, with a real dog.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: the northern devotional and allegorical print, with the Ars moriendi, the dance of death and the knight of the woodcut tradition; and the Italian monumental equestrian. The departure is to fuse them, setting a proportioned horse and a classical calm in a Gothic gorge peopled by northern demons, and to carry the burin to a range of tone and texture it had not had. The fusion is real. But the stake had been placed earlier, in the Apocalypse woodcuts and the Adam and Eve of 1504; in 1513 Dürer was the most famous printmaker in Europe, working within a manner he had built. The culmination of a proven path more than a wager against it.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The engraved line is the knight’s world: one burin makes the polish of steel, the hide of the horse, the rot on Death’s face and the scrub of the gorge, so that the moral contrast is also a contrast of surfaces cut in one plate. Constancy is hardness and shine, corruption frayed and broken hatching. In paint the armour would become colour and the dread would lose its graphic edge; in a large format the intimacy of a meditation held in the hand would go. Held short of the top: the frieze in profile is a form painting and relief had used for centuries, and the emblem programme can be, and has been, told in words.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The evidence is long and still open. Five centuries have not settled who the knight is: the Christian soldier, the stoic, the robber knight, a friend of the maker, Savonarola, an ideal. Nor what the S before the date means, why the dog, why the lizard, or whether he sees Death at all. Panofsky made the plate one leg of a triad with Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in his Study, a grouping since questioned; Nietzsche took it as an image of hope without hope; the twentieth century read it as a German heroic emblem, and that reading is now itself a subject of study. Under the glass the hatching yields at every scale.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Intrinsic force: with its companions the plate is where engraving became capable of the tonal and tactile range of painting, and it showed that a small sheet, printed many times, could carry a grave and complex meditation at the height of a painted altarpiece. That changed what a print could be. Held below 9.0: much of that redirection belongs to Dürer’s output as a whole and to the other two plates, not to this one alone. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the three plates were models of the engraver’s craft for centuries; the image passed into German letters and thought, through Nietzsche and Thomas Mann; and it was taken up, against its own sense, in German nationalist imagery.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Survival over five centuries, judged on the edition. The form is whole: the image survives in many impressions from Dürer’s lifetime, and its defining form is fully legible in good ones. Its presence has been continuous since 1513, collected, copied and reproduced without a break; the print has never been out of view. Against that, paper and ink are fragile, impressions vary widely, late, worn or retouched sheets weaken the image, and the fate of the copper plate is not established. The charges are small, because the edition is the unit and enough early impressions stand for the work as made to be seen. Fragility and variance keep it from the highest figures.
Score: 9.3 / 10
Judged as command of the burin on copper; the making is load-bearing, for the meaning is carried by the contrast of cuts. Every surface is its own system of line: swelling and tapering parallels for the steel, curved cross-hatching for the horse’s musculature, flicked and broken strokes for Death’s rot and the Devil’s hide, dense tonal fields for the gorge so that the knight stands out in light against them. The horse is built to a studied proportion. This is the summit of the medium as it stood. Held a step from the top by a slight crowding of the lower field and a stiffness in the set profile that reads as heraldic.
Score: 9.6 / 10
Take the most distant elements: the knight’s steel and Death’s rotting flesh, the castle and the lizard. One law governs them: a single light from the left, a single system of engraved line, a single scale of tone from bare paper to the densest cross-hatching, and a single direction of movement against which Death and the Devil are set as drags. The natural, the human and the demonic are cut by one burin, across a wide range: heroic, grotesque, emblematic, observed. Held below the top by a slight seam between the observed horse and the fantastic Devil, joined rather than fused, and by a lower left that reads as an emblem shelf.
Score: 9.1 / 10
The orders held: the soul and its constancy; death; evil; the sacred, in the destination on the height and the armour of faith; the natural order, in the gorge, the trees, the horse, the dog and the lizard; a social order, the knightly class in the armour of its day; and time, in the hourglass. They are integrated by the journey, not listed. What holds the axis lowest is what is absent and what the form cannot carry: no family, no labour, no state beyond the knight’s class, no history beyond an allegory of the single soul, on a sheet held in the hand. Large for one sheet; the figure describes the form.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.6, The Imperishable at 9.3 and The Inner Law at 9.1. A command of the burin that gives every surface its own system of line and carries the meaning in the contrast of cuts; an image whole and continuously in view since 1513, carried by many early impressions rather than one object; and one light, one line and one direction holding steel and rot, castle and lizard, under a single law.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.6: the soul, death, evil, the sacred, nature, a social class and time are held on one road, and there is no family, no labour, no state and no history beyond an allegory of the single soul; the figure describes a sheet held in the hand. Above it, The Swerve at 8.3, a real fusion of northern allegory and the Italian horse made within a manner Dürer had already proved; then The Unconcealment and The Sublime at 8.5, one stance disclosed in emblem and a height as compact as the sheet.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.8, The Made at 9.6, The Inner Law at 9.1, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.3, The Archetypal Deep at 9.0 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.8 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment meets it exactly at 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.3 falls two tenths short, the decisive turn having been taken in the Apocalypse woodcuts and the Adam and Eve of 1504 rather than here. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.3, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.6. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 105.1, an average of 8.76 that displays 8.8, two tenths short of the 9.0 the summit requires; the aggregate holds the print in Tier IV, and The Swerve would withhold the summit besides.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the print as an image and as a subject of commentary, held well; thinly for the physical history of the plate and the number and states of the surviving impressions, so that where a judgment turns on them it is held more loosely. No impression, image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the engraving as an edition: the image as printed from Dürer’s copper plate and judged in good early impressions, of which many survive in the major print rooms. No single impression is scored. Weak late impressions, the copies by other hands and the fate of the plate bear on survival only, and nothing in them is charged to the work. Not in the unit, and neither scored nor credited: Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in his Study, which are context; the Apocalypse woodcuts and the Adam and Eve of 1504, which are context for the departure. Panofsky’s reading, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann and the nationalist uses of the image are reception, weighed on return and reach. No words are quoted: the inscription on the tablet is described, not transcribed. The identity of the knight and the meaning of the S, the dog and the lizard are given as readings, none settled. Facts that could not be verified are not given or are stated as open, among them the exact dimensions of the sheet and of the plate mark, whether the burin was used alone, whether Dürer himself grouped the three large engravings, the name he is said to have given the print in the diary of his Netherlands journey, an earlier watercolour the rider is said to develop and the particular Italian models said to lie behind his horse studies, which collections hold impressions and the number that survive, whether the copper plate survives, details of the plate beyond its principal parts (among them a foxtail on the lance and the exact placing of the castle), the later engravers said to have copied the plate, and poems on it attributed to a later writer.