Knight, Death, and the Devil

Cleveland Museum of Art

Knight, Death, and the Devil

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In this tour de force engraving, considered one of his three greatest “masterworks,” Albrecht Dürer portrayed a mounted soldier who resolutely forges through a dark gorge, ignoring a horned devil in his path. Confronted by Death itself, crowned with snakes and holding an hourglass indicating mortality, the soldier and his faithful dog demonstrate the strength of righteousness required to stay upon the right path. The skull underfoot suggests that others have not been so resolute. Indeed, this road of life is full of obstacles, with the city on the hill accessible, it seems, only by way of treacherous peaks. The personification of Death in this image holds an hourglass whose sands are exactly half full, which may indicate a turning point in the rider's life choices.

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record

Medium
engraving
Credit Line
Elisabeth Severance Prentiss and Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Collections by exchange
Type of artwork
Print
Department
Prints

Also in Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. The museum’s own label for these fields has not been confirmed yet, so each is named by its field in the museum’s data.

creation_date
1513

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

A knight in full plate armour rides through a shadowed gorge, eyes locked forward, refusing to acknowledge Death riding beside him - hourglass raised, its sands exactly half full. Behind him crowds a horned devil; beneath his horse's hooves, a skull. Albrecht Dürer created this engraving in 1513 using only a burin on copper, no colour, just line - achieving the sheen of metal and the texture of fur in one of the most technically demanding prints ever made.

Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.

What the image shows

A knight on horseback confronts a bearded figure in a forested area.

Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.8BotQbwIFYKRT35s.VlvhXGWUVtIqYcWsmTVeXY1BB6BtDzlPUFsVAhlcVyXvWMoW6MwtYUeOEb08wzrQ00-FlZAi4kDMTIS4hHnm4-_3kbWhfFee3eGWJ9KXni4gW-KtKMEYmrLfBZW8LtMx82eSohQ_BwfqEl0rmOXTNLVmr37ZOlE1uLtsrXKCjvluxzUjbxqUeXi0Stl0yHmlA8oqvKREdDc8O6HK2iXMW18-ePA4DBdreQ27NxjZGfqna636BtNEZ4_8J5TDGLjSSy_WmdRnwUaqRJjmNOHM7raRjHDzml_S_K1CJpj5yVPX0dcwlgSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.-PSzDuDM1shOSG5l.nESVGHxMC9NR1yMlQ3KuTkACLKafu-oQ7UjfPp1JpEvYRuc03IpMjH4A11MulHpJ0tqM02TBdVglxh7MxKAKFqW9j1siGhzDZL7lz-2PLEeuYZ9ldR4JG1T2Frfv8qTnNIniuggYS7W6TKNCQwJrD036LdiGWgfAynY0PFIkATGAnpy9n3uNrusw0330WOeU2UyppYVzQfidAMNeu9nUppg40uj88YKO98X-BglquKFw1nwm1Ls5xOBRL9jHLtG49GAJ_vONcSrkZLuneZsmjOMGkF0OaI20LFyGWiABRQ
Open this page
See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Provenance
Prince of Liechtenstein, Feldsberg and Vienna, stamp (Lugt 4398), verso, lower left, in blue
How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Cleveland Museum of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
141637
Object Type
Print
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Type of artwork” · copied as is
Creator
Albrecht Dürer
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creators (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Artist-role creator's description with life dates removed.
Culture
Germany
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
engraving
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Prints
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Tags
  • male
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field artists_tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
Credit Line
Elisabeth Severance Prentiss and Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Collections by exchange
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
Prince of Liechtenstein, Feldsberg and Vienna, stamp (Lugt 4398), verso, lower left, in blue
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
1513
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1513
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1513
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_latest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

Knight, Death, and the Devil

Aug 6, 2026 · Short

YouTubeInstagram
Follow LinkedCultureYouTubeInstagramBluesky
Museum record

Related across collections

Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.