Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514, engraving, 24.45 x 19.37 cm (Minneapolis Institute of Art). Based on research generously provided by Thomas E. Rassieur at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and narrated by Dr. Naraelle Hohensee
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Dr. Naraelle Hohensee: [0:07] “Melencolia I” is dominated by the figure of a brooding angel, which some art historians interpret as the personification of melancholy. Others have suggested that she might be the embodiment of geometry. The angel is androgynous in appearance, but we most often refer to her with the pronoun “she” since the personification of melancholy is traditionally female.
[0:28] The angel’s wings bring to mind Dürer’s famous watercolor of a bird’s wing, which he created in 1512. She wears a wreath of buttercup and watercress. These were considered antidotes to the dryness that was associated with melancholy in Dürer’s time.
[0:46] The angel holds a compass, which is used to draw arcs and circles, as well as measure and compare proportions. It may symbolize creation or rationality. Keys hang from her belt. These are symbols of power and order, and a purse or moneybag lies near her feet.
[1:04] At the lower right, we see a tool called a clyster that was used to relieve constipation, another one of the physical symptoms associated with melancholy. The sleeping dog on the left is a greyhound. Dogs are well known symbols of fidelity, and they are also associated with melancholy.
[1:20] Next to the angel is a smaller figure called a putto. A putto is a common figure in art, usually shown as a naked male child, although this one is clothed. Sometimes a putto is shown with wings, as this one is here.
[1:35] In the lower-right-hand corner, we see Albrecht Dürer’s monogram, along with the date 1514. Dürer usually signed his work with a monogram, using his first initial to make a stylized door, or gate. The last name Dürer comes from the German word “tür,” which means door.
[1:51] Dürer didn’t leave us any written explanations about his intended meaning in “Melencolia I,” but Erwin Panofsky, one of the most important art historians of the 20th century, suggested that this work might be Dürer’s psychological self-portrait. If this is so, the larger angel would embody the fully developed artist, while the putto would symbolize a lesser artist, scribbling away, eyes closed, unaware of its surroundings.
[2:17] According to Panofsky, the angel’s sadness comes from the fact that she, as opposed to the putto, can see ideal forms in her imagination, but knows that she will be unable to fully realize them in the physical world.
[2:30] Many tools of physical creation are present in the image. At the angel’s feet, we see a collection of woodworking tools strewn across the floor. Nails, which may also be a subtle reference to the Crucifixion, a straight edge, a saw, a plane, and what may be a molder’s form, a device to ensure the uniformity of the contours of molding.
[2:51] In the center of the image is a millstone, to the left of this we see a hammer, as well as a crucible. Alchemists use crucibles to heat base metals such as lead in their attempts to turn them into gold.
[3:05] Models of ideal geometric forms also appear — a sphere and an octahedron, a complex eight-sided shape sometimes called “Dürer’s solid.” This shape shows off Dürer’s masterful ability to render perspective.
[3:19] On the wall on the upper right, we find a magic square. A magic square is a grid in which the numbers in each row — diagonal and quadrant, as well as other patterned combinations — add up to the same number, in this case 34.
[3:33] The year 1514, when this image was made, also appears in the bottom row in the magic square. Above the magic square is a bell, which was often used to mark the end of life. The bell rope looks as if it is being controlled by an unseen hand. The hourglass is a symbol of limited time, often connected to the idea of the memento mori, a reminder of death.
[3:55] Next to this is a balance, a symbol of judgment, often shown weighing souls. To the left of this, a ladder. Through the ladder’s rungs, we glimpse a receding shoreline along a vast body of water.
[4:07] The rainbow in the sky above is a symbol of hope or heaven. Inside the rainbow’s arc, we see a comet or shooting star. Unusual celestial events were seen as having dark or threatening meanings in Dürer’s time.
[4:19] Dürer may have also witnessed the landing of a large meteorite on November 7th, 1492, when a 250-pound rock came to Earth about 30 miles from Basel, where he was at the time. Next to this, a bat, a creature of darkness, holds a banner with the title of the image.
[4:36] The name “Melencolia I” corresponds to one of the forms of melancholy identified by a German thinker named Cornelius Agrippa, who divided melancholy into three levels. Level I in this hierarchy was supposed to govern the imagination and pertained to artists. With its plethora of symbols, “Melencolia I” is sometimes called Dürer’s “summa,” because it brings together so many of his interests and ideas.
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Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I,1514, engraving, 24 x 18.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Albrecht Dürer is the rare artist who truly deserves to be called genius. Genius, however, is tricky business. Dürer’s intellect, introspection, and unrelenting perfectionism may have driven him to a state of melancholia—what is now known as depression. Dürer’s famed Melencolia engraving of 1514 has been called the artist’s psychological self-portrait, and indeed the image does convey the terrible struggle of high expectations and debilitating inertia, when excessive introspection paralyzes the imagination.
Sunken in despair
This personification of melancholy is strong and capable yet immobile, chin in hand, the figure appears sunken in despair. Building tools are scattered about—compass, saw, nails, plane—yet the figure leaves them there untouched.
The figure is androgynous; the female pronoun is used here in keeping with the gender of the word melancholia, but some art historians believe the figure to be male. Her strong, muscular, substantial body and delicate wings epitomize her dilemma. She aspires to flight, yet is too heavy for her tiny wings to lift. Perhaps this is an allegory of hubris—the dangerous conceit that a mere human may become like a god. Flight is only for gods—as the unfortunate Icarus learned when he flew too close to the sun and the wax in his self-fashioned wings melted. The limits of mass and volume, of being a person in the world, prevent Melencolia’s flight—physical or creative. In a more prosaic fashion, this situation is familiar to anyone facing a demanding project. The desk is clear, the computer is on, books are in arm’s reach…and nothing happens.
Melencolia’s inertia has created chaos and neglect. Her creative frustration renders her unable to accomplish the simplest of tasks, such as feeding the malnourished dog who has grown thin from neglect. The image exudes physical and intellectual vertigo. Like the artist, we cannot quite figure out what to do, or where to look, or where we are. Are we indoors or out? Where does the ladder start? And where does it stop?
Albrecht Dürer, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1514, engraving, 24.6 x 18.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Order and confusion
If we compare the Melencolia to another of Dürer ’s master engravings, Saint Jerome in his Study, the chaos of Melancholy’s predicament comes into high relief. Jerome’s well appointed study glows with light, peace and calm. The saint works in the pleasant warmth of his study on his translation of the Bible from the original languages into Latin. Objects are orderly, though not rigidly so. The saint’s work is meditative rather than burdensome. He is unhurried—indeed the skull and hourglass, reminders of death and the passage of time—create no urgency or fear. Jerome has come to accept mortality and without fuss or worry, and he occupies himself exclusively with the matter at hand.
Detail, Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I,1514, engraving, 24 x 18.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Compare the order of Jerome’s study to the scattered tools and scattered mind of Melencolia. Space itself is thrown into confusion. The polyhedron in the center of the composition turns the picture into a parody of a neatly organized Renaissance picture constructed according to the laws of one-point linear perspective. The polyhedron conceals the horizon, the starting point for linear perspective, a subject Dürer wrote about and used with aplomb. Rather than tidy orthogonals converging in vanishing point, the lines implied by the edges of the polyhedron zoom in all directions like scattering mercury.
One can imagine Melencolia tripping should she try to stand up because the space itself is in turmoil. Jerome’s contented lion and Melencolia’s neglected dog exemplify the contrast of productive calm and agitated disfunction. (Legend says that Jerome plucked a thorn from the lion’s paw and the he became Jerome’s trusty companion forever after.)
Melancholy and artists
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait or Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, oil on parchment pasted on canvas, 56 x 44 cm (Louvre)
Melencolia is a flagship picture for Renaissance melancholy, a temperament that was increasingly tied to creativity and the construction of the artistic personality. During this period, Melancholy was divided up into three types; the Roman number I in this print likely refers to the category associated with artists.
While melancholy was seen purely as illness in the Middle Ages, the result of too much black bile, Renaissance thinkers began to see it as a badge of honor—the mark and burden of genius. This evolving notion of melancholy and its implications for the “artistic temperament” are evident in Dürer’s growth as an artist. His early self-portrait of 1494 bears the inscription “My affairs must go as ordained on high” (“1493 (D.H.); MIN SACH DIE, GAT ALS ES OBEN SCHTAT”).
This phrase, emphasizing fate and duty, perfectly expresses the late Gothic mentality of fulfilling divine and parental obligations rather than seeking fulfillment as an individual person. Individuality becomes particularly poignant for Dürer after his encounter with the Italian Renaissance in Italy.
Dürer’s diaries tell of his fascination not only with Italian art but with the status of the Italian artist. Italian artists were conceded expressive identities and rewarded with status and regard as intellectuals, while in Germany artists often remained respectable but anonymous artisans.
What is Melencolia?
from the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Melencolia is a variant spelling of “melancholy,” which means sadness. It was seen as one of the four humors, or temperaments, determining one’s personality or mental state. The four include choleric (quick to anger), phlegmatic (calm), sanguine (cheerful), and melancholy. Melancholy was believed to result from an excess of a bodily fluid known as “black bile.” Though understanding of the underlying mechanism has changed, today’s physicians have come to accept chemistry’s role in mental illness.
Dürer drew his understanding of melancholy from the writings of Marsilio Ficino, a prominent Italian philosopher. A melancholic himself, Ficino saw both pluses and minuses to the condition’s tendency to stimulate thought and emotion. Melancholy could drive one mad, yet it also produced the sensitivity required for creativity. Ficino wrote, “All truly outstanding men, whether distinguished in philosophy, in statecraft, in poetry or in the arts, are melancholics.”
In his print, Dürer specified Melencolia I, or the first form of melancholy. He must have had access to treatises by German author Cornelius Agrippa. Agrippa, who explored the realm of esoteric knowledge (including astrology, the occult, and magic), divided melancholy into three levels. Level One, the lowest, governed the imagination and pertained to artists. Level Two controlled the reason of scientists and physicians. Level Three governed the spirit or intuitive thought of theologians (and certainly Agrippa himself). Ficino further related melancholy to Saturn—both the planet and the god. Even today, we might call a gloomy person “saturnine.”
Was Dürer Melancholic?
At times, yes.
Even as a young artist he drew a remarkably expressive self-portrait in which his mood is evident. Though the dating is uncertain, another drawing is often placed around 1520–21. In the spring of 1521, during his trip to the Netherlands, Dürer became very ill, and the illness lingered:
In the third week after Easter I was seized by a hot fever, great weakness, nausea, and headache. And before, when I was in Zeeland, a strange sickness came over me, such as I have never heard of from any man, and I still have this sickness.
Presumably he made this drawing to show a doctor the nature of his ailment. The inscription reads, “There, where the yellow spot is located, and where I point my finger, there it hurts.” He points to his spleen. He may have contracted malaria, which can cause that organ to swell and brings on the other symptoms he described. The spleen used to be considered the source of “black bile.” The association was so close that an archaic definition of the English word “splenetic” is “melancholy.
