Others see the "I" as a reference to nigredo, the first stage of the alchemical process. He suggested instead that the "I" referred to the first of three types of melancholy defined by Cornelius Agrippa (see Interpretation). Panofsky considered but rejected the suggestion that the "I" in the title might indicate that Dürer had planned three other engravings on the four temperaments. In an unfinished book for young artists, he cautions that too much exertion may lead one to "fall under the hand of melancholy". Dürer mentions melancholy only once in his surviving writings. In 15, Dürer experienced the death of a number of friends, followed by his mother ( whose portrait he drew in this period), engendering a grief that may be expressed in this engraving. Another note reflects on the nature of beauty.
A commonly quoted note refers to the keys and the purse-"Schlüssel-gewalt/pewtell-reichtum beteut" ("keys mean power, purse means wealth") -although this can be read as a simple record of their traditional symbolism. He made a few pencil studies for the engraving and some of his notes relate to it. There is little documentation to provide insight into Dürer's intent. The print has two states in the first, the number nine in the magic square appears backward, but in the second, more common impressions it is a somewhat odd-looking regular nine. Jerome in His Study, there is no evidence that he conceived of them as a thematic group. While Dürer sometimes distributed Melencolia I with St. The prints are considered thematically related by some art historians, depicting labours that are intellectual ( Melencolia I), moral ( Knight), or spiritual ( St. Melencolia I is one of Dürer's three Meisterstiche ("master prints"), along with Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) and St.
As the art historian Campbell Dodgson wrote in 1926, "The literature on Melancholia is more extensive than that on any other engraving by Dürer: that statement would probably remain true if the last two words were omitted." Panofsky's studies in German and English, between 19 and sometimes with coauthors, have been especially influential. Melencolia I has been the subject of more scholarship than probably any other print. Summarizing its art-historical legacy, he wrote that "the influence of Dürer's Melencolia I-the first representation in which the concept of melancholy was transplanted from the plane of scientific and pseudo-scientific folklore to the level of art-extended all over the European continent and lasted for more than three centuries." Context Ī preparatory sketch for the engraving see also this sketch. The art historian Erwin Panofsky, whose writing on the print has received the most attention, detailed its possible relation to Renaissance humanists' conception of melancholia. Other art historians see the figure as pondering the nature of beauty or the value of artistic creativity in light of rationalism, or as a purposely obscure work that highlights the limitations of allegorical or symbolic art. As such, Dürer may have intended the print as a veiled self-portrait. Dürer may have associated melancholia with creative activity the woman may be a representation of a Muse, awaiting inspiration but fearful that it will not return. The sky contains a rainbow, a comet or planet, and a bat-like creature bearing the text that has become the print's title.ĭürer's engraving is one of the most well-known extant old master prints, but, despite a vast art-historical literature, it has resisted any definitive interpretation. Behind the figure is a structure with an embedded magic square, and a ladder leading beyond the frame. Other objects relate to alchemy, geometry or numerology. The area is strewn with symbols and tools associated with craft and carpentry, including an hourglass, weighing scales, a hand plane, a claw hammer, and a saw. Holding her head in her hand, she stares past the busy scene in front of her.
The print's central subject is an enigmatic and gloomy winged female figure thought to be a personification of melancholia – melancholy. Melencolia I is a large 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer.
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