Master of oil and watercolor painting as well as ink drawing, German artist Albrecht Dürer made his greatest impact in yet another medium: printmaking, which he elevated to a fine art through both woodcuts and copperplate engravings. In 1513 he made “Knight, Death, and the Devil,” the first of three intricate engravings that became known as his Meisterstiche, or master prints.
Born in Nürnberg (in modern-day Germany) in 1471, Dürer was profoundly influenced by his Italian Renaissance contemporaries, including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.
(Depictions of the devil terrified European Christians in the Middle Ages.)