An 11-Year-Old Boy Rescued a Mysterious Artwork From the Dump. It Turned Out to Be a 500-Year-Old Renaissance Print

A detailed Renaissance engraving once saved from the dump by an 11-year-old boy has been identified as the work of Albrecht Dürer, the famed German Renaissance artist. The rare print is now heading to the auction block, where it’s predicted to fetch over $26,000.

“I’ve seen countless prints copying Dürer, from a much later period or produced by a different means, but I’d only ever seen the real thing in museums—until now,” says Jim Spencer, director of Rare Book Auctions, in a statement.

Born in 1471, Dürer is considered “one of the most technically gifted artists of all time,” as the London Times’ Emma Yeomans writes. Dürer was a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, and his work influenced artists such as Raphael and Titian. Though he also painted, Dürer’s most enduring pieces are his incredibly detailed copper-plate engravings.

When 24-year-old Mat Winter approached Spencer earlier this year with the print in question, telling the book dealer that he’d found it at a local dump more than a decade ago, Spencer’s expectations were low.

“I opened the package, removed the bubble wrap and staggered back in awe,” says Spencer in the statement. “My hands were shaking as I held it up to the light. The laid paper was absolutely right for the period. The quality of the engraving was exceptional beyond words. I knew that only one person could’ve produced something like this—it had to be the hand of Dürer himself.”

The work is a print of Dürer’s woodcut engraving Knight, Death and the Devil (1513). It’s one of his three Meisterstiche, or master engravings. The illustration depicts a knight astride a muscular horse, accompanied by a sickly, hourglass-toting figure representing death and followed by a goat-like devil.

As Winter says in the statement, he’s had an eye for antiques since he was ten. As a child in Cranbrook, a town in southern England, he used to search the local dump for treasure.

“One day, a lady had some rubbish in her car, including the print,” Winter adds. “I thought it looked interesting and asked if I could have it. She was more than happy to give it to me. … It’s been tucked away in a cupboard at home with all my other antique finds for the last 13 years.”

Winter recently decided to “get it checked out to see if it was as special as it looked,” he says. As soon as Spencer saw the print, he knew he needed a second opinion.

“I was straight on a train to the British Museum,” Spencer tells Artnet’s Richard Whiddington. There, Spencer met with the museum’s prints and drawings experts, and they compared the print with three others in the museum’s collection.

One pivotal detail confirmed the work’s value: a tiny, faint scratch running through the head of the knight’s horse. Per Artnet, this was the result of a scratch on the copper plate, which was later fixed. The scratch’s presence in Winter’s print proved that it was the real deal.

“It’s the most important print I’ve ever cataloged and offered for sale,” says Spencer in the statement. “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].”

The online auction for Winter’s print of Knight, Death and the Devil will end on September 18. As Spencer tells Artnet, the piece is an excellent example of Dürer’s artistic prowess.

“Dürer’s earlier, more Gothic woodcuts were revolutionary,” he says. “But his copper engravings were even more amazing, awe-inspiring, almost superhuman—as this engraving shows.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.