At A Dump In England, An 11-Year-Old Boy Found A Rare 500-Year-Old Print Made By A Famous German Renaissance Artist That Recently Sold At Auction For About $40,000
Thirteen years ago, an 11-year-old boy in England discovered an elaborate-looking piece of artwork at a dump site and decided to take it home with him.
For over a decade, he stored it in his home. Little did he know that he had a rare 500-year-old Renaissance print in his possession. Recently, it was put up for auction and sold for about $40,000.
At the age of 11, Mat Winter was exploring a dump when an ornately detailed engraving in a mound of trash caught his eye.
The garbage was in the back of a woman’s car. When he asked the woman if he could have it, she said yes.
Since he was a kid, Winter had been intrigued by antiques and would regularly search for treasure in the local dump.
Winter is now 24-years-old. This year, he took the engraving to an auction house in Staffordshire, England, called Rare Book Auctions to get it appraised.
“When the vendor said it had been rescued from a dump, I didn’t expect much,” said Jim Spencer, director of the auction house.
“I felt a shiver of excitement as soon as I looked upon this print…and I was straight on a train to the British Museum.”
Winter’s childhood hobby paid off. Spencer knew immediately that the engraving was the work of Albrecht Dürer, a famous German Renaissance artist. Dürer was born in 1471 and was a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci.
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His work influenced other renowned artists, such as Raphael and Titian. Dürer did create paintings, but he was best known for his copper-plate engravings.
At the museum, Spencer collaborated with experts to analyze the print. After comparing it to three other examples in the museum’s collection, they concluded it was an authentic Dürer piece.
It was titled “Knight, Death and the Devil (1513),” one of three of his master engravings. The other two are “Melencolia I (1514)” and “St. Jerome in His Study (1514).”
The 1513 illustration portrays a knight riding on top of a muscular horse. There was also a sickly figure that represented death, carrying an hourglass. The figure was followed by a devil that looked like a goat.
The detail that confirmed the work’s value was a tiny, faint scratch that ran across the head of the knight’s horse.
The imperfection was the result of an accidental scratch on the copper plate prior to printing and was later fixed.
“It’s the most important print I’ve ever cataloged and offered for sale,” said Spencer. “It was pasted down on a mount, probably around 1900, which will affect the value, but it’s a really nice impression with great clarity and contrasts, which is a massive bonus. In excellent, unmounted condition, this is a print that can command sums close to £200,000 [more than $260,000].”
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