The Meisterstiche ("master prints") by Dürer are three of his most famous engravings. They are ''

Knight, Death and the Devil ''Knight, Death and the Devil'' () is a large 1513 engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer, one of the three '' Meisterstiche'' (master prints) completed during a period when he almost ceased to work in paint or woodcuts to focus on engra ...

'' (1513), ''

Melencolia I ''Melencolia I'' is a large 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Its central subject is an enigmatic and gloomy winged female figure thought to be a personification of melancholia – melancholy. Holding her head in ...

'' (1514) and ''St. Jerome in His Study'' (1514). These three large prints (about ) are often grouped together because of their perceived quality and unity of meaning, although this latter is a matter of scholarly dispute. Art historian

Erwin Panofsky Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 – March 14, 1968) was a German-Jewish art historian whose work represents a high point in the modern academic study of iconography, including his hugely influential ''Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art ...

has described them as showing meticulous care in execution and also having complexity and significance in terms of iconography. Panofsky, while recognising that these are Durer's "most famous engravings" and are "not unjustly, known as his 'Meisterstiche'", notes that they "have no appreciable compositional relationship with one another" and should not, in any technical sense, be "considered as 'companion pieces'". They do, Panofsky argues, form "a spiritual unity". Here, Panofsky refers to

Friedrich Lippmann Friedrich Lippmann (6 October 1838 in Prague – 2 October 1903 in Berlin) was a German art historian and director of the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin State Museums, noted for his work on Dürer, Holbein and Italian ...

's noticing of the scholastic classification of the virtues they represent: the moral, the theological and the intellectual. The ''Knight'' showing "the life of the Christian in the practical world of decision and action"; ''St. Jerome'' showing "the life of the Saint in the spiritual world of sacred contemplation"; and ''Melencolia I'' showing the "life of the secular genius in the rational and imaginative worlds of science and art".Panofsky, E (1955) ''The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer'', Princeton University Press, 3rd Edition (1st Edition 1943) p151 File:Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and Devil, 1513, NGA 6637.jpg, The Knight File:Albrecht Dürer - Melencolia I - Google Art Project ( AGDdr3EHmNGyA).jpg,

File:Dürer-Hieronymus-im-Gehäus.jpg, St. Jerome

References

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Other sources

* Grigg, Robert (1986) "Studies on Dürer's Diary of His Journey to the Netherlands: The Distribution of the" Melencolia I"." ''Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte'', 398-409. * Filippi, Elena, and Michael Friel. (1995) ''Albrecht Dürer's Meisterstiche: proposal for an historical-epochal reading''. University of Chicago, Chicago * Lippmann, F. (1883-1929) Zeichnungen von Albrecht Durer in Nachbildungen (7 vols., vols. VI and VII F. Winkler, ed.), Berlin Prints_by_Albrecht_Dürer