Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil, (1513).
Photo: Image courtesy Rare Book Auctions, Lichfield, United Kingdom.
Auction of the Week: A Rare Albrecht Dürer Print Discovered in Dumpster Sells for $44,800
The 500-year-old print by the German Renaissance master hit the block 13 years after being salvaged from a “rubbish dump”
A rare, original print by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer that was nearly thrown away in a rubbish dump in England, has now sold at auction for $44,800. The 500-year-old print titled Knight, Death and the Devil, an original copper plate engraved by the artist in 1513, is one of his three “master prints,” and considered one of his most important etchings.
With a fascinating backstory, the work was discovered 13 years ago by a British man named Mat Winter, who found the artwork in the back of a woman’s car at a rubbish dump when he was just 11 years old. Drawn to its intricate detail, he asked if he could keep it, taking it home and storing it in a shed. It was not until over a decade later that he took it to a specialist at Rare Books Auctions in Lichfield, England, and found out it may be of high value. “It’s got so much detail to it, and something told me that’s worth something but I never really knew what,” Winter said before the auction, according to a story by the BBC.
Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil, (1513). Photo: Image courtesy Rare Book Auctions, Lichfield, United Kingdom.
Estimated to sell for between £10,000-£20,000, the work finally fetched $44,800 at Rare Book Auctions in Lichfield, England on September 19, selling to a German collector.
“It was a huge honor to handle and catalogue for our inaugural sale,” the auction house director Jim Spencer, told Artnet in an email, and that he “knew immediately that it had to be from the hand of Dürer himself—nobody else could come close to that finesse with the burin,” a steel tool used in engraving.
Albrecht Dürer was a master German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance, who was known throughout Europe for his extraordinary high-quality woodcut prints. The market record for the artist’s work is $866,500 for a woodcut called The Rhinoceros, sold at Christie’s New York in 2013.
Cover: Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil, (1513).
Photo: Image courtesy Rare Book Auctions, Lichfield, United Kingdom.
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