Last week I used an Albrecht Dürer etching called Melencholia I as a photo to include in a post… Since then I have been looking at this etching (it is possibly my favorite Dürer etching…). I found several websites which attempt to describe this complex and detailed piece:
Dürer’s Melencholia I – a masterpiece, and a diagnosis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/mar/18/albrecht-durer-melencolia-masterpiece-diagnosis
Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I has cut its black lines deep into the modern imagination. It shows a winged being who sits in apparent dejection, surrounded by unused objects of science, craft and art, holding a pair of dividers as she broods. Her face is a mask of darkness, but her bright eyes glare, revealing an acuteness of mind that contrasts with her exhausted pose.
Albrecht Dürer’s Melencholia
http://www.alchemylab.com/melancholia.htm
The rainbow, seen in the background, was the alchemist’s favorite symbol for the colors that were held to appear, in a definite sequence culminating in red (within the Vase of Hermes) during the operations of the Great Work or in the preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone. The magic square, the compasses, the polyhedron, and sphere, all reflect the Pythagorean insistence on the importance of number and form in the Cosmos. The Pythagorean and Platonic conceptions formed an important constituent of alchemical doctrine; further, the compasses, the balance, and the hour-glass, with its graduated scale, are suggestive of a common alchemical dictum, borrowed from The Wisdom of Solomon: “Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight."
The alchemical significance of the crucible requires no explanation, for this most familiar of all pieces of alchemical apparatus was to be found in every alchemist’s laboratory, den, or kitchen. The most familiar agent used by the alchemists in their operations was fire; so much so, that the alchemist was often called the "Child of Fire." Fire was commonly symbolized by cutting, penetrating, or wounding implements and tools, like the saw and plane and the hammer and nails of Durer’s design. The alchemical imagination embodied archetypal Fire in another form as Sophic Sulfur, one of the two final ingredients of the Philosopher’s Stone, and occasionally shown in the similitude of a dog.
The second ingredient, Sophic Mercury, was sometimes represented by Water; that is to say, "Our Water" of the Hermetic Stream (or heavy water, not wetting the hands). Alternatively, this philosophical Water was regarded as a menstruum uniting Sophic Sulfur and Sophic Mercury. Occasionally, the seeker after the Stone is shown balancing the opposed elements, Fire and Water, in a pair of scales, and at one time it was imagined that, in alcohol, such a combination of irreconcilable principles had been achieved.
The seven-runged ladder is another common feature of alchemical symbolism, the rungs representing the seven metals, the operations of alchemy, and the associated heavenly bodies. One of the paintings of Splendor Solis (1582), for example, shows a man standing on the sixth and seventh rungs (representing silver and gold) and gathering the golden fruit of the Philosophic Tree, from the roots of which issues the Hermetic Stream. In the later Mutus Liber a young man, using a stone for his pillow, is shown asleep at the foot of a ladder bearing ascending and descending angels; this stone, upon which the biblical Jacob poured oil, was sometimes accepted as a symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone.
We now come to the central theme of Durer’s "Melencolia." The alchemist’s lot was such that he was often depicted as a melancholy and frustrated being, as, for example, by Chaucer, Weiditz, Brueghel, and Teniers. In a wider sense, melancholy was held to be an attribute of students or seekers after knowledge. The doctrine of melancholy, moreover, is inseparable from the saturnine mysticism that permeates alchemy. This association, which was widely recognized in the early sixteenth century, finds many reflections in Durer’s masterpiece. One of the elements of saturnine mysticism is measurement, typified by the compasses, balance, and hour-glass.
Albrecht Durer’s Melencholia, a self portrait
http://www.lagrange.edu/resources/pdf/citations/2010/02Berndt_Art.pdf
Albrecht Dürer’s Melencholia I abounds in symbolic images: the lost and vacant stare of the main figure Melancholia, the sands of time running through the hourglass, the forlorn, scribbling winged putto, and the magic square. Art historians have discussed these images for decades; however, the focus is usually on what those images represent separately. Instead, the main question should be: why did Dürer create Melencholia I? There are numerous possible answers to this question. One common belief is that contemporary concepts of mathematics fascinated the artist. The main images used to support this theory are the magic square and the geometric stone. Another possibility is that Dürer enrolled in the growing Humanist movement. To support this conjecture, art historians typically discuss the closed book under the main figure’s hand. Whereas both mathematics and Humanism may have contributed to the inception of Melencholia I, there is another more plausible and simpler possibility: Dürer himself suffered from depression. This paper argues that Dürer’s depression is the primary reason for the creation of this haunting image.
I think that this illustrates the value and beauty of classical art, in that is becomes a rather obvious case where these three disparate takes on this piece imply that there are hundreds of other perspectives to bring forth.
