โ€œThe Knight, Death and the Devilโ€: Dรผrer's late Gothic symbolism

The famous engraving by Albrecht Dรผrer represents the epiphany of the man Heideggerianly thrown into the world, whose destiny is, humanistically, to be "faber fortunae suae", regardless of any obstacle, including the apparently impassable one of evil, that is, the devil, and of time, or of decay and death.


di Simone Salandra
cover: โ€œThe Knight, Death and the Devilโ€, remake by Cornelis-Van-Dalem

The famous engraving by Albrecht Durer entitled "The Knight, Death and the Devil" can be dated to 1513. Although Dรผrer never endorsed this hypothesis, it is part of an ideal triptych, of burin engravings, similar in size and topics, but profoundly different between They. This triptych includes, in addition to the aforementioned "The Knight, Death and the Devil", the "San Girolamo" and "La Melancholia".

"The Knight, Death and the Devil" it is fundamentally the symbolic representation of a spiritual conduct strictly connected to salvation. The engraving depicts a knight who, statuesque in his posture, dressed in splendid armor, with a helmet on his head and armed with a sword and spear, rides indomitable on a majestic steed. Illuminated by a light that brings out, down to the smallest details, the iron decision, the knight heads, supported by an indomitable religious faith, symbolized by the dog, towards a distant destination. It is a fortified city that many thought to be Nuremberg, Dรผrer's birthplace, but which more plausibly could be identified with the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, that is, the ultimate goal of every Christian.

duerer _-_ ritter_tod_und_teufel_der_reuther

The companions of his journey, which winds through a desolate land dominated by a rocky landscape, are death and the devil, the "terricula and of Phantasmata" cited by Erasmus in his "Manual of the Christian soldier" as the scarecrows that every miles christianus he must move away from himself and of which, indeed, the Dรผrerian knight seems not to care in the least. The first travel companion, death, is portrayed as a horrible and cadaverous character, almost a sort of double negative of the knight, who rides on a skeletal horse with its nose turned towards the ground. Death wears on her head, whose neck is surrounded by snakes, a royal crown and holds the hourglass, symbol of the transience of the existence of which death is the mistress.

Behind the knight appears the second companion, the devil, who shows, in a strange mix of tradition and fantasy, a pig's face, long wolf ears, goat features, an enormous crescent-shaped horn and holds a pike. On the rough and stony ground, in addition to a skull and an elegantly drawn dog, a salamander is visible. As can easily be deduced from this summary description, the work had, and still has, an extraordinary evocative and exhortative power, objectifying that moral tension in which, especially in the Germanic world, religiosity, humanism, moral strength, ancient chivalry, esoteric and spiritual ferments they called each other.

In this sense, the knight becomes the archetype of the hero that each and, particularly, the Germanic people should have embodied, especially in an epoch of decline such as that in which the West was. The engraving of "The Knight, death and the devil" therefore lends itself, from a symbolic point of view, to many interpretative possibilities. These are possibilities that can be traced back to some fundamental traits, reflected by the various figures that occupy the scene.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.47.52 to

The central figure that dominates the engraving is, of course, the mounted horseman. It shows, on a figurative level, a synthesis between late-Gothic-naturalistic elements of Germanic derivation and high-Renaissance elements of Italic derivation, all conceived according to the precepts of classicism and revisited, at least for the proportions, according to a canon conceived by Dรผrer himself . It can therefore be said that engraving presents itself on a formal level as a sort of perfect complexio oppositorum, in which different styles and canons come together in a single image of totality, at the center of which is the man, in this case the rider. Indeed, it could be assumed, with reasonable certainty, that it indicates the epiphany of the man Heideggerianly thrown into the world, with the same symbolic-visionary significance with which Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man represented the epiphany of the union between microcosm and macrocosm.

But the knight with his posture exalts, in the extreme sunset of the Middle Ages, those ethical-aesthetic values โ€‹โ€‹interwoven with feet, balance, harmony and courage that were typical of the ideals of the Cavalry, thus appearing as a personality that has been accomplished and realized in a long way, whose prodrome is the primitive and savage fighter. The latter, slowly, humanized his belluini customs by transforming himself into miles of the orderly ranks of the knights of the chivalric cycles, where the force is directed to a very specific and finalized project. For this reason, he can be considered as an initiate who, although belonging to another world, walks the roads of this world, facing risks and inconveniences.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.47.35 to

This hypothesis is reinforced, as by contrast, by the background, which is fundamental in the economy of the image and its symbolic value. In fact it is represented, in the first instance, by a barren and desolate gorge, in many respects mirroring that phase of the historical arc of which engraving is one of the most incisive emergencies. On the other hand, at a time when the Renaissance seems to touch its cultural and spiritual apex, Europe seems to be plunging into an unprecedented crisis which affects the very essence of its identity.

In the storm of the Reformation, the millennial certainty of the unity of faith and the security of a single God is shattered, it is pulverized in the many refractions in which the figure of Christ has dissolved. And with it the identity of the individual is also pulverized who, from now on, will have as a model the Christ of his sovereign, of his country, of his culture and nothing more. There Res Publica Christian, already seriously weakened by the struggle that had pitted Papacy against Empire, now finds itself orphaned and left to itself. And she looks more and more like that "Wasteland" or "broken", to refer to the famous reference by Dante and the no less famous one by Eliot, in turn inspired by the legend of the Holy Grail. In the absence of the centre, the possibility for man of falling into the multiplication of centres, each of which aspires to present itself as the only possible and the only true one, is very high.

This produces a disastrous effect of fragmentation which not only inhibits the possibility of approaching wholeness, but progressively denies the very existence of wholeness; as it has historically happened. The effect is the multiplication of a chaotic state that in evoking the ancestral fear of primordial chaos, actually reproduces it. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the traveling companions (or, rather, the frame) of the Dรผrerian knight are death and the devil, both seen as the symbolic and grotesque lords of chaos and the main proponents of its diffusion. In this too, Dรผrer shows a particular symbolic originality of him.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.48.11 to

The death, in fact, it is not depicted according to the usual iconographic stylistic features, it is not the macabre skeleton or the decomposed corpse dear to the stylistic features of the Middle Ages, but a bearded, crowned, lipless and noseless corpse wearing the crown, symbol of the undeniable victory of the death, together with a serpente twisted around the neck, which refers to decomposition but also to rebirth. The perspicuous attribute of him is in fact the hourglass, symbol of the passage of time. On the other hand, the image of the sand flowing in the hourglass and of the aging man recalls the medieval image of dissolution that is objectified in the sarcophagus, the devourer of the flesh, a sarcophagus that, like an eternal beast, awaits its inevitable deadly prey.

But it is in the sentiment and in the tragic perception of the irreparable passage of life that it is situated the experience of Faustian man. And it is at the same time, even if profane, the extraordinary stimulus to live and achieve results which, even if illusory, project the brevity of existence into Eternity. In this sense, two opposing but complementary themes come together in death-time. The first, is what it refers to Kronos-Saturn, the all-consuming god; the other tries to be an antidote to the precariousness of existence in the search for something eternal and stable to cling to. Thus, in the culminating moment of the humanistic-bourgeois historical arc, time, increasingly secularized, has only death and rubble as its natural company.

However, the triumph of death-time cannot, and must not, disturb the man who, like the knight, determines his destiny despite the lordship of death and time. His destiny is, humanistically, to be faber fortunatee suaeindependently of any obstacle, including the apparently insurmountable one of evil, i.e. the devil, and of time, i.e. decay and death.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.49.07 to

The devil, like death, it presents itself in a particular symbolic form. It differs, while maintaining some iconic features, from the image of Satan dear to the late medieval inquisitors and, not even coinciding with the sophisticated devil of theologians who saw in it a pure spirit, albeit decayed and corrupted by sin. If anything, he is a mixture of animal elements where the wolf, the caprone, the pork blend together, as if to demonstrate that in the devil the animal nature of man manifests itself in all its uncontrolled, instinctual, selfish and destructive virulence. The devil is what man should not be, but what he becomes when he poses himself as "the lord of this world" and is the cause of wars, as can be seen from the pike he holds. Not surprisingly, Satan wears a single horn on his forehead that resembles the Islamic crescent.

It could be said that, with this terrifying demonic representation, Dรผrer wanted to underline how, alongside material death, there is always a death spiritual that coincides with the fall of man at the animal level, i.e. instinctual. The thing acquires a particular value of denunciation given the imminent breakdown of Christianity derived from the vices of men, always lurking like the devil who threatens the Erasmian knight, behind him. Yes to this devil suits, perfectly, what is the essence of Satan whose intent is to bring people to physical death, but also to civil and spiritual death, as would soon happen with the plunge of Europe into the abyss of divisions and civil and religious wars that would mark its future for centuries.

However, Dรผrer's knight is impermeable to all this, he looks far away, oblivious to the solitude, of death, of the devil and of the demon-inhabited desert in which he finds himself. It is no coincidence that a dog, probably a greyhound, with an elegant and slender figure which, together with fidelity, symbolizes three no less necessary virtues, tireless zeal, knowledge and truthful discernment. These are the natural aid for those who, like the knight, proceed on a difficult and impervious road, for which it is necessary to know what one wants in one's heart, aided by the lucidity of the rational mind. These are virtues, amplified by the image of salamandra which, precisely because of its power to emerge unscathed from the devouring fire, symbolically represents the righteous who never loses the peace of the soul and trust in God, even in the midst of tribulations.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.48.54 to

However, the first and foremost symbolic attribute of the rider is, of course, the horse which merges with him into a single body. The horse, the rider and the shaft thus form a compact wholeIn this way, the rider also made his own the symbolic values โ€‹โ€‹of which the horse was the bearer, life, strength, skill, dexterity, valor and courage combined with desire, wildness and sexual passion. The same can be said for the sword which the knight proudly carries by his side, a lethal and cruciform instrument, a symbol of totality and perpetuity, exemplifying man's virile, warrior and regal abilities. The sword also appears as a symbol of transformation as it has many characteristics in common with transmuting practice alchemy, which makes it identical to fire, like the sword of the angel placed to guard the Eden, like the double-edged sword that comes out of the mouth of the majestic old man in the Johannine Apocalypse. The sword is also a sign of clarity, wisdom and justice as well as strength, valor and supreme knowledge.

Like the sword, the lancia holding the Dรผrerian knight and which is an integral part of his equipment expresses the power of truth of which the knight should be the invincible witness. Clearly, the phallic value of the spear is one with the image of theaxis beat, that is, it expresses the connection between heaven and earth, a connection that embodies totality and creativity, but also the strength of the divine, as shown by the decisive presence of the spear next to the Grail. Consequently, carrying the spear is equivalent to becoming an active agent of one's own salvation and that of others, as can be seen from theOrdo Romanus which establishes, in detail, the phases of the consecration of the new knight. There armorfinally, together with the helmet it constitutes the symbolic completion of the figure of the knight, as they represent his defense against every danger, an external defense but which has its counterpoint in the interior one.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.48.26 to

Bring the helmet it means for the knight not to stoop to vile actions and not to incline the nobility of his heart to malice and some other bad custom. Similarly, the armor means castle and wall against vices and errors, because, as the castle and the wall are entirely fenced and closed so that no one can enter, so the armor is closed and buckled on every side to remind the noble heart of the Knight that he cannot commit treason or be stained with pride. As you can see, the external uniform of the knight completely reinforces the internal one and vice versa, in an inextricable symbolic mixture.

Il terminus ad quem towards which, fully armed and without any fear, the knight is heading is the fortress or city that can be glimpsed, far away, against the background of the engraving. How has already been mentioned, it could be the city of Nuremberg, but more likely, given the symbolic structure of the work, it could be the earthly Jerusalem, the city par excellence where every good Christian would want and should have a dwelling, having in sight, after the terrestrial transit, the celestial one. Although perhaps, more likely he could identify himself with the divine himself who has always been considered the inner stronghold, the place to go, the elective abode where the soul can meet with his God. This is the place to which the long and harsh path of the knight leads, a path that descends into the depths of man himself where, in Augustinian style, the truth dwells.

This image reappears today with unchanged vigor and insinuates itself into the soul of those who want to accept it and identify with it, being able to look ahead without fear, because they don't care about death or the devil. This is the teaching of Albrecht Dรผrer and basically, the direction of our journey between death and the devil.

Screen 2020-05-29 02.48.36 to


ย 

5 comments on โ€œโ€œThe Knight, Death and the Devilโ€: Dรผrer's late Gothic symbolism"

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *