A 500-year-old engraving by Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, which is said to have been found at a tip, has sold at auction for £26,500.
Mat Winter, from Cranbrook, Kent, said he discovered the artwork when he was 11 and was unaware of its value until he took it to a specialist as an adult.
The engraving – titled Knight, Death and the Devil and signed and dated 1513 – was sold in an online auction by Rare Book Auctions in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on Wednesday, surpassing a guide price range of £10,000-£20,000.
The auctioneers’ director, Jim Spencer, told BBC Radio Kent he had seen various reproductions of the image, but when he saw the engraving he “knew in [his] heart immediately that it could only be the hand of Dürer himself”.
Mr Winter said he saw the work in the back of a woman’s car while at the rubbish dump as a child, and asked her if he could take it.
“It’s got so much detail to it, and something told me that’s worth something but I never really knew what,” he said.
Mr Spencer said there was “every possibility” that a museum could bid for the engraving, which he described as “worthy of being in a museum”.
Dürer, born in 1471, was a major painter and printmaker who introduced Renaissance art to Germany and northern Europe.
Mr Winter and Mr Spencer have been contacted for comment following the sale.
