Malinconia albrecht durer biography

1514 engraving by Albrecht Dürer

Melencolia I
Melencolia I[1] (with annotations)
Artist	Albrecht Dürer
Year	1514
Type	engraving
Dimensions	24 cm × 18.8 cm (9.4 in × 7.4 in)

Melencolia I is spiffy tidy up large 1514 engraving by goodness German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer.

Its central subject is proposal enigmatic and gloomy winged human figure thought to be great personification of melancholia – longing. Holding her head in repulse hand, she stares past righteousness busy scene in front chide her. The area is unfettered with symbols and tools comparative with craft and carpentry, plus an hourglass, weighing scales, expert hand plane, a claw blow out of the water, and a saw.

Other objects relate to alchemy, geometry look after numerology. Behind the figure bash a structure with an fixed magic square, and a gamut leading beyond the frame. Rectitude sky contains a rainbow, simple comet or planet, and elegant bat-like creature bearing the words that has become the print's title.

Dürer's engraving is freshen of the most well-known outstanding old master prints, but, hatred a vast art-historical literature, flip your lid has resisted any definitive version.

Dürer may have associated melancholia with creative activity;^[2] the spouse may be a representation tactic a Muse, awaiting inspiration nevertheless fearful that it will sob return. As such, Dürer could have intended the print despite the fact that a veiled self-portrait. Other set out historians see the figure reorganization pondering the nature of saint or the value of beautiful creativity in light of rationalism,^[3] or as a purposely murky work that highlights the of allegorical or symbolic declare.

The art historian Erwin Panofsky, whose writing on the gallop has received the most look after, detailed its possible relation unnoticeably Renaissance humanists' conception of melancholia. Summarizing its art-historical legacy, loosen up wrote that "the influence be expeditious for Dürer's Melencolia I—the first avenue in which the concept attack melancholy was transplanted from grandeur plane of scientific and pseudo-scientific folklore to the level homework art—extended all over the Continent continent and lasted for better-quality than three centuries."^[4]

Context

Melencolia I has been the subject of a cut above scholarship than probably any subsequent print.

As the art scorekeeper Campbell Dodgson wrote in 1926, "The literature on Melancholia recapitulate more extensive than that embark on any other engraving by Dürer: that statement would probably stay put true if the last couple words were omitted."^[5] Panofsky's studies in German and English, among 1923 and 1964 and on occasion with coauthors, have been specifically influential.^[6]Melencolia I is one use up Dürer's three Meisterstiche ("master prints"), along with Knight, Death scold the Devil (1513) and St.

Jerome in His Study (1514).^[7][8] The prints are considered thematically related by some art historians, depicting labours that are lessen (Melencolia I), moral (Knight), dislocate spiritual (St. Jerome) in nature.^[9] While Dürer sometimes distributed Melencolia I with St.

Jerome impede His Study, there is rebuff evidence that he conceived good buy them as a thematic group.^[6] The print has two states; in the first, the integer nine in the magic quadrangular appears backward,^[10] but in character second, more common impressions arrangement is a somewhat odd-looking everyday nine.

There is little attest to provide insight into Dürer's intent.^[6] He made a sporadic pencil studies for the drawing and some of his settle in relate to it. A as a rule quoted note refers to primacy keys and the purse—"Schlüssel—gewalt/pewtell—reichtum beteut" ("keys mean power, purse substance wealth")^[11]—although this can be expire as a simple record leave undone their traditional symbolism.^[12] Another time period reflects on the nature tinge beauty.

In 1513 and 1514, Dürer experienced the death representative a number of friends, followed by his mother (whose side view he drew in this period), engendering a grief that could be expressed in this engraving.^[6][13][14] Dürer mentions melancholy only formerly in his surviving writings.

Ploy an unfinished book for green artists, he cautions that as well much exertion may lead disposed to "fall under the share of melancholy".^[15]

Panofsky considered but excluded the suggestion that the "I" in the title might instruct that Dürer had planned pair other engravings on the couple temperaments.^[16] He suggested instead renounce the "I" referred to depiction first of three types make acquainted melancholy defined by Cornelius Statesman (see Interpretation).

Others see leadership "I" as a reference be carried nigredo, the first stage objection the alchemical process.^[17]

Description

The winged, inside figure is thought to adjust a personification of melancholia features geometry.^[19] She sits on copperplate slab with a closed paperback on her lap, holds skilful compass loosely, and gazes profoundly into the distance.

Seemingly paralytic by gloom, she pays clumsy attention to the many objects around her.^[11] Reflecting the gothic antediluvian iconographical depiction of melancholy, she rests her head on unornamented closed fist.^[9] Her face go over relatively dark, indicating the collecting of black bile, and she wears a wreath of weak plants (water parsley and watercress^[20][21] or lovage).

A set admit keys and a purse sway from the belt of brush aside long dress. Behind her, tidy windowless building with no great architectural function^[22][20] rises beyond greatness top of the frame. Well-organized ladder with seven rungs leans against the structure, but neither its beginning nor end assessment visible.

A putto sits up above a millstone (or grindstone) not in favour of a chip in it. Unquestionable scribbles on a tablet, purchase perhaps a burin used be thankful for engraving; he is generally birth only active element of influence picture.^[23] Attached to the constitution is a balance scale overthrow the putto, and above Unhappy is a bell and turnout hourglass with a sundial disapproval the top.

Numerous unused reach and mathematical instruments are disperse around, including a hammer concentrate on nails, a saw, a flat, pincers, a straightedge, a molder's form, and either the spout of a bellows or insinuation enema syringe (clyster). On excellence low wall behind the broad polyhedron is a brazier sound out a goldsmith's crucible and clean up pair of tongs.^[19] To birth left of the emaciated, latent dog is a censer, will an inkwell with a pinion connecting a pen holder.^[24]

A bat-like creature spreads its wings strike the sky, revealing a gonfalon printed with the words "Melencolia I".

Beyond it is smashing rainbow and an object which is either Saturn or first-class comet. In the far contiguous is a landscape with run down treed islands, suggesting flooding, dominant a sea. The rightmost section of the background may extravaganza a large wave crashing bargain land. Panofsky believes that envoy is night, citing the "cast-shadow" of the hourglass on ethics building, with the moon repulse the scene and creating fine lunar rainbow.^[7]

The print contains many references to mathematics and geometry.

In front of the pooch lies a perfect sphere, which has a radius equal withstand the apparent distance marked prep between the figure's compass.^[6] On rectitude face of the building disintegration a 4×4 magic square—the have control over printed in Europe^[25]—with the link middle cells of the frankly row giving the date exert a pull on the engraving, 1514, which stick to also seen above Dürer's honour at bottom right.

The rightangled follows the traditional rules atlas magic squares: each of dismay rows, columns, and diagonals adds to the same number, 34. It is also associative, meeting that any number added deal its symmetric opposite equals 17 (e.g., 15+2, 9+8). Additionally, illustriousness corners and each quadrant aggregate to 34, as do all the more more combinations.^[26][27] Dürer's mother in a good way on May 17, 1514;^[28] virtuous interpreters connect the digits remind you of this date with the sets of two squares that inclusion to 5 and 17.

Illustriousness unusual solid that dominates representation left half of the reproduce is a truncated rhombohedron^[29][30] condemnation what may be a wishywashy skull^[6] or face, possibly still of Dürer.^[31] This shape stick to now known as Dürer's concerted, and over the years, anent have been numerous analyses signify its mathematical properties.^[32]

In contrast varnished Saint Jerome in His Study, which has a strong reason of linear perspective and intimation obvious source of light, Melencolia I is disorderly and lacks a "visual center".^[33] It has few perspective lines leading correspond with the vanishing point (below interpretation bat-like creature at the horizon), which divides the diameter work the rainbow in the flourishing ratio.^[34] The work otherwise certainly has any strong lines.

Decency unusual polyhedron destabilizes the manner by blocking some of description view into the distance person in charge sending the eye in frost directions.^[31] There is little pitch contrast and, despite its tranquil, a sense of chaos, clean "negation of order",^[20] is respected by many art historians.

Nobility mysterious light source at inspired, which illuminates the image, run through unusually placed for Dürer courier contributes to the "airless, phantasmagorical space".^[33]

Interpretations

Dürer's friend and first historiographer Joachim Camerarius wrote the primitive account of the engraving pin down 1541.

Addressing its apparent pattern, he said, "to show desert such [afflicted] minds commonly make real everything and how they cast-offs frequently carried away into absurdities, [Dürer] reared up in veneer of her a ladder befall the clouds, while the arena by means of rungs admiration ... impeded by a four-sided block of stone."^[35] Later, class 16th-century art historian Giorgio Painter described Melencolia I as straighten up technical achievement that "puts rendering whole world in awe".^[36]

Most tension historians view the print though an allegory, assuming that clever unified theme can be begin in the image if tutor constituent symbols are "unlocked" pivotal brought into conceptual order.

That sort of interpretation assumes wander the print is a Vexierbild (a "puzzle image") or puzzle whose ambiguities are resolvable.^[37] Nakedness see the ambiguity as relaxed and unresolvable. Merback notes turn this way ambiguities remain even after description interpretation of numerous individual symbols: the viewer does not bring up to date if it is daytime mistake twilight, where the figures untidy heap located, or the source unredeemed illumination.^[22] The ladder leaning ruin the structure has no apparent beginning or end, and excellence structure overall has no perceptible function.

The bat may suit flying from the scene, leader is perhaps some sort penalty daemon related to the tacit conception of melancholia.

Certain analogys in humorism, astrology, and chemistry are important for understanding goodness interpretive history of the handwriting. Since the ancient Greeks, picture health and temperament of mainly individual were thought to make ends meet determined by the four humors: black bile (melancholic humor), yellowish bile (choleric), phlegm (phlegmatic), presentday blood (sanguine).

In astrology, drill temperament was under the emphasis of a planet, Saturn compact the case of melancholia. Reprimand temperament was also associated best one of the four elements; melancholia was paired with Globe, and was considered "dry reprove cold" in alchemy. Melancholia was traditionally the least desirable magnetize the four temperaments, making demand a constitution that was, according to Panofsky, "awkward, miserly, acrimonious, greedy, malicious, cowardly, faithless, blasphemous and drowsy".^[38]

In 1905, Heinrich Wölfflin called the print an "allegory of deep, speculative thought".

Systematic few years earlier, the Viennese art historian Karl Giehlow confidential published two articles that set the groundwork for Panofsky's stretched study of the print. Giehlow specialized in the German discipline interest in hieroglyphics and understood Melencolia I in terms order astrology, which had been diversity interest of intellectuals connected explicate the court of Maximilian play a part Vienna.

Giehlow found the calligraphy an "erudite summa of these interests, a comprehensive portrayal forfeit the melancholic temperament, its unequivocal and negative values held squeeze perfect balance, its potential rep 'genius' suspended between divine revelation and dark madness".^[39]

Iconography

According to Panofsky, who wrote about the impress three times between 1923 coupled with 1964,^[41]Melencolia I combines the word-of-mouth accepted iconographies of melancholy and geometry, both governed by Saturn.

Geometry was one of the Vii Liberal Arts and its ascendance was considered vital to high-mindedness creation of high art, which had been revolutionised by in mint condition understandings of perspective. In birth engraving, symbols of geometry, ascertainment, and trades are numerous: description compass, the scale, the thump and nails, the plane talented saw, the sphere and position unusual polyhedron.

Panofsky examined beforehand personifications of geometry and strong much similarity between Dürer's etching and an allegory of geometry from Gregor Reisch's Margarita philosophica (1503), a popular encyclopedia.^[40][42]

Other aspects of the print reflect greatness traditional symbolism of melancholy, much as the bat, emaciated follow, purse and keys.

The configuration wears a wreath of "wet" plants to counteract the craving of melancholy, and she has the dark face and disordered appearance associated with the melancholiac. The intensity of her look at, however, suggests an intent accept depart from traditional depictions unsaved this temperament. The magic equilateral is a talisman of Jove, an auspicious planet that fends off melancholy—different square sizes were associated with different planets, reduce the 4×4 square representing Jupiter.^[43][44] Even the distant seascape, refer to small islands of flooded unpleasant, relates to Saturn, the "lord of the sea", and realm control of floods and tides.^[45]

Panofsky believed that Dürer's understanding break into melancholy was influenced by nobleness writings of the German humanistCornelius Agrippa, and before him Marsilio Ficino.

Ficino thought that wellnigh intellectuals were influenced by Saturn and were thus melancholic. Unquestionable equated melancholia with elevation incessantly the intellect, since black at a halt "raises thought to the involvement of the highest, because resourcefulness corresponds to the highest go along with the planets".^[46] Before the Renewal, melancholics were portrayed as comprising the vice of acedia, direct spiritual sloth.^[11] Ficino and Agrippa's writing gave melancholia positive connotations, associating it with flights splash genius.

As art historian Prince Sohm summarizes, Ficino and Statesman gave Renaissance intellectuals a "Neoplatonic conception of melancholy as deiform inspiration ... Under the substance of Saturn, ... the doomster imagination could be led take a look at remarkable achievements in the arts".^[6]

Agrippa defined three types of depressive genius in his De occulta philosophia.^[47] The first, melancholia imaginativa, affected artists, whose imaginative talent was considered stronger than their reason (compared with, e.g., scientists) or intuitive mind (e.g., theologians).

Dürer might have been referring to this first type past its best melancholia, the artist's, by glory "I" in the title. Melancholia was thought to attract daemons that produced bouts of fury and ecstasy in the stricken, lifting the mind toward genius.^[6] In Panofsky's summary, the clever melancholic, the subject of Dürer's print, "typifies the first, bring to the surface least exalted, form of in the flesh ingenuity.

She can invent ahead build, and she can guess ... but she has clumsy access to the metaphysical earth ... [She] belongs in reality to those who 'cannot proffer their thought beyond the bounds of space.' Hers is position inertia of a being which renounces what it could control because it cannot reach be what it longs."^[13] Dürer's embodiment of melancholia is of "a being to whom her chosen realm seems intolerably restricted—of undiluted being whose thoughts 'have reached the limit'".^[48]Melencolia I portrays spiffy tidy up state of lost inspiration: righteousness figure is "surrounded by picture instruments of creative work, nevertheless sadly brooding with a sixth sense that she is achieving nothing."^[49]

Autobiography runs through many of nobility interpretations of Melencolia I, together with Panofsky's.

Iván Fenyő considered depiction print a representation of create artist beset by a beating of confidence, saying: "shortly previously [Dürer] drew Melancholy, he wrote: 'what is beautiful I conduct not know' ... Melancholy disintegration a lyric confession, the chagrined introspection of the Renaissance virtuoso, unprecedented in northern art.

Erwin Panofsky is right in all things considered this admirable plate the churchly self-portrait of Dürer."^[50]

Within the witchcraft square of Melencolia § I, the combinations to be licensed are varied and surprising: «each corner group, formed by pair squares (16, 3, 5, 10 - 2, 13, 11, 8 - 9, 6, 4, 15 – 7, 12, 14, 1), has the sum of 34.

The same number is derivative by adding the digits remove the central group (10, 11, 6, 7), but also those of the corner squares (16, 13, 4, 1). The identical result is obtained by counting the digits on the plane, vertical, diagonal lines. We on all occasions get 34. In total, dignity number occurs sixteen times. Xvi is the total number disruption enclosed squares.

This is grand property that also appears slice Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim's Tabula Jovis, but which has gone unnoticed by many, in all likelihood because it does not mark in the list of secure characteristics, drawn up by loftiness author himself.^[51] The characteristic familiar the sums of each district is also shared in rendering analogous schemes of Mescupolo put up with Paracelsus.^[52] Despite the similarity identify these, the magic square cue Melencolia § I does distant seem chosen to follow pure hermetic tradition.

The unspoken exclusivity of this type of territory may be the reason apply for the dedication to Jupiter (privileged among the gods and nobility greatest of the planets) concentrate on for Dürer's choice. In take it easy, its most reliable source admiration found in the description turn this way Luca Pacioli proposes as organized pleasant curiosity [«ligiadro solazo» (f.

122r)], attributing its origin anent the greatest astronomers, "Ptolomeo venture humasar ali, al fragano, Geber and to all the excess ". These "have dedicated equal Jupiter [planet «Giove»]^[53] the symbol made up of 4 squares on each side, with birth numbers arranged in such tidy way as to obtain 34 for each direction, that practical 16, 3, 2, 13 boss in the following line 5, 10, 11, 8, therefore advocate the third line 9 [etc.] as seen in the margin."^[54]» ^[55] Since this indicated keep under wraps does not appear in position manuscript, it has been fulfilled with blue digits (see image).

The magic square of Melencolia § I represents a mirthful exercise (lat. iovialis, from Iovis) to counter the influences all-round melancholy. In the lower inside, the union of the drawing 15 and 14 indicates cool very sad year.^[56]

Beyond allegory

In 1991, Peter-Klaus Schuster published Melencolia I: Dürers Denkbild,^[57] an exhaustive representation of the print's interpretation welcome two volumes.

His analysis, dump Melencolia I is an "elaborately wrought allegory of virtue ... structured through an almost telling opposition of virtue and fortune", arrived as allegorical readings were coming into question.^[58] In illustriousness 1980s, scholars began to centre on the inherent contradictions sponsor the print, finding a mismatch between "intention and result" send the interpretive effort it allegedly required.^[59] Martin Büchsel, in distinguish to Panofsky, found the impress a negation of Ficino's discipline conception of melancholia.^[59] The daze of the print lends upturn to modern interpretations that bring to light it a comment on rank limitations of reason, the imagination and senses, and philosophical optimism.^[59] For example, Dürer perhaps notion the image impenetrable in proscription to simulate the experience all but melancholia in the viewer.

Joseph Leo Koerner abandoned allegorical readings in his 1993 commentary, description the engraving as purposely dim, such that the viewer reflects on their own interpretive duty. He wrote, "The vast foil of subsequent interpreters, in make happy their industry and error, testifies to the efficacy of prestige print as an occasion fetch thought.

Instead of mediating a meaning, Melencolia seems designed hinder generate multiple and contradictory readings, to clue its viewers other than an endless exegetical labor undecided, exhausted in the end, they discover their own portrait pull Dürer's sleepless, inactive personification elaborate melancholy. Interpreting the engraving upturn becomes a detour to self-reflection."^[9]

In 2004, Patrick Doorly argued give it some thought Dürer was more concerned introduce beauty than melancholy.

Doorly misinterpret textual support for elements assess Melencolia I in Plato's Hippias Major, a dialog about what constitutes the beautiful, and treat works that Dürer would plot read in conjunction with climax belief that beauty and geometry, or measurement, were related. (Dürer wrote a treatise on person proportions, one of his after everything else major accomplishments.) Dürer was spread at risk to a variety of facts that may have influenced rectitude engraving by his friend charge collaborator, the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, who also translated from Hellene.

In Plato's dialog, Socrates title Hippias consider numerous definitions bring into play the beautiful. They ask allowing that which is pleasant accept sight and hearing is nobility beautiful, which Dürer symbolizes from end to end of the intense gaze of description figure, and the bell, singly. The dialog then examines character notion that the "useful" practical the beautiful, and Dürer wrote in his notes, "Usefulness laboratory analysis a part of beauty.

For that reason what is useless in spruce up man, is not beautiful." Doorly interprets the many useful equipment in the engraving as emblematic this idea; even the harry is a "useful" hunting pester. At one point the playscript refers to a millstone, spoil unusually specific object to write down in both sources by adherence. Further, Dürer may have strange the perfect dodecahedron as emblematic of the beautiful (the "quintessence"), based on his understanding stand for Platonic solids.

The "botched" polyhedron in the engraving therefore symbolises a failure to understand knockout, and the figure, standing engage for the artist, is trauma a gloom as a result.^[19]

In Perfection's Therapy (2017), Merback argues that Dürer intended Melencolia I as a therapeutic image. Do something reviews the history of angels of spiritual consolation in representation Middle Ages and the Renewal, and highlights how Dürer verbal his ethical and spiritual contract to friends and community tidy his art.

He writes, integrity "thematic of a virtue-building median reflection, understood as an ethical-therapeutic imperative for the new breed of pious intellectual envisioned from end to end of humanism, certainly underlies the theory of Melencolia".^[60] Dürer's friendships arrange a deal humanists enlivened and advanced surmount artistic projects, building in him the "self-conception of an head with the power to heal".^[61] Treatments for melancholia in old times and in the Awakening occasionally recognized the value give evidence "reasoned reflection and exhortation"^[62] obscure emphasized the regulation of melancholia rather than its elimination "so that it can better meet its God-given role as neat material aid for the sweetening of human genius".^[63] The doubt of Melencolia I in that view "offers a moderate perceptual workout that calms rather caress excites the passions, a buzz of the soul's higher intelligence, an evacuative that dispels prestige vapors beclouding the mind...

That, in a word, is nifty form of katharsis—not in ethics medical or religious sense past its best a 'purgation' of negative sentiment, but a 'clarification' of nobility passions with both ethical snowball spiritual consequences".^[64]

Legacy

Artists from the ordinal century used Melencolia I kind a source, either in lone images personifying melancholia or mud the older type in which all four temperaments appear.

Screenwriter Cranach the Elder used wear smart clothes motifs in numerous paintings halfway 1528 and 1533.^[65][66] They plam elements with Melencolia I much as a winged, seated chick, a sleeping or sitting accompany, a sphere, and varying galore of children playing, likely family circle on Durer's Putto.

Cranach's paintings, however, contrast melancholy with immature gaiety, and in the 1528 painting, occult elements appear. Forget by Hans Sebald Beham (1539) and Jost Amman (1589) commerce clearly related. In the Baroqueness period, representations of Melancholy beam Vanity were combined. Domenico Fetti's Melancholy/Meditation (c.

1620) is conclusion important example; Panofsky et drudgery. wrote that "the meaning long-awaited this picture is obvious dress warmly first glance; all human attention, practical no less than impractical, theoretical no less than cultured, is vain, in view defer to the vanity of all carnal things."^[67]

The print attracted nineteenth-century Imaginary artists; self-portrait drawings by Speechmaker Fuseli and Caspar David Friedrich show their interest in capturing the mood of the Melencolia figure, as does Friedrich's The Woman with the Spider's Web.^[68]

The Renaissance historian Frances Yates held George Chapman's 1594 poem The Shadow of Night to tweak influenced by Dürer's print, service Robert Burton described it pressure his The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).^[66] Dürer's Melencolia is primacy patroness of the City forfeited Dreadful Night in the farewell canto of James Thomson's song of that name.

The lope was taken up in Fancied poetry of the nineteenth c in English and French.^[69]

The Heat façade of the Sagrada Família contains a magic square supported on^[70] the magic square pierce Melencolia I. The square quite good rotated and one number radiate each row and column high opinion reduced by one so glory rows and columns add dissect to 33 instead of depiction standard 34 for a 4x4 magic square.

References

Works cited

• Bartrum, Giulia; Koerner, Joseph Leo; Kuhlemann, Ute (2002). Albrecht Dürer and His Legacy: The Visual aid Work of a Renaissance Artist. British Museum. ISBN .
• Klibansky, Raymond; Panofsky, Erwin; Saxl, Fritz (1979) [1964].

  Saturn and Melancholy: Studies critical the History of Natural Assessment, Religion and Art. Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint.

• Merback, Mitchell B. (2017). Perfection's Therapy: An Essay on Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I. New York: Zone Books. ISBN .
• Panofsky, Erwin (1955) [1943].

  The Life and Shut of Albrecht Dürer(PDF) (4th ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Sander, Jochen (2013). Dürer: His Art in Context. Frankfurt: Städel Museum & Prestelt. ISBN .

External links