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WaspWaistLover — Melancholia I An Engraving By Albretch Durer
Published: 2019-10-07 16:24:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 1280; Favourites: 6; Downloads: 1
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I doubt I can add anything to the half a millennium of discussion and analysis of this work. I agree with the critic who called it a spiritual self portrait of the artist. Dürer was inordinately fond of self-portraits, after all, and the spirit or angel is rather androgynous (her crooked arm and posture a decidedly unladylike). Much of the symbolism is standard stuff: the scales, the hourglass, the bell, the comet, or whatever it is, all fitting with the theme of melancholy in various possible ways (melancholy here isn't simple depression, I don't think, but the necessary state of a great artist). The scattered tools, mostly, but not all, carpenter's, may represent the distractions of of other arts and crafts, which so plagued Leonardo (and I think the bell represents the distraction of calls from mundane needs).
But I think you are right to single out the polyhedron. This is the most remarkable feature of the piece, yet seems to have little if anything to do with the theme of melancholy. It's striking because it looks so "modern", and I can't think of a single reason why Dürer chose this as the focal point. I think there is a relationship of contrast between it and the "perfect" sphere below it, and possibly with the magic square in the top right. I found and interesting article on theories about this mysterious object: www.theguardian.com/science/al… which you might enjoy.
Whether or not HPL was thinking of this image when he wrote The Haunter I can't say, but I don't think it's implausible.
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Fyra: Thank you for this very detailed and thoughtful reply! Yes, I think the pictorial iconography has been dealt with in sundry articles over the years, including E. H. Gombrich but especially by Irwin Panofsky, who seemed to specialise in Netherlandish art. Unhappily the books I owned by these two writers were water-damaged in a cellar flood several years ago, requiring disposal.
MANY thanks for that link. No less than five approaches to the polyhedron! One falls because of dating conflicts and another through lack of evidence. Which leave three still possible, though their likelihood is at best conjectural. Without getting abstruse here, I think we might have a philosophical interpretation as well, akin to the Platonic doctrine of 'ideal forms' ie. those existing more as metaphysical ideal forms, of which the actual earthly embodiments would be nothing more than crude approximations. There can be little doubt that Durer was influenced by the great Renaissance translator and humanist Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530) who was a friend and letter writer to the artist, and was well conversant in Platonist and Neo-Platonic thought traditions. Additionally, of course, there was obviously a great exchange with the much better known Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) whose wide knowledge of Greek thought, especially of certain rather esoteric Neo-Platonic doctrines, fascinated Durer. You are no doubt fully aware of Durer's portrait engraving of this scholar. In view of this, it seems to me that the large polyhedron as a geometric entity or expression within a perfect sphere might be the most likely. Your thoughts? WWL
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I think it's almost certain that Dürer was playing with Platonic solids, which is, as I said, what the sphere indicates. There is a mathematical description here mathworld.wolfram.com/DuerersS…
But what this observation actually means in terms of this work is uncertain. However, I think it's quite likely that he wished to explore the ideas in this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melencol… earlier work, and framed it in the subject or melancholia, which also interested him.
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Both Panofsky and Gombrich went into some precedents but thanks for those links, Fyra. Yes, that earlier illumination DOES contain much the same imagery and iconography. We have to keep in mind that our terms like the Dark Ages, Carolingian, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and the rest were thought up and applied well after the actual times in question. Obviously the people, including the better educated classes, hardly noticed ANY changes save as individual manifestations from their own scholars, architects, sculptors, painters and such. The term "Gothic" was invented by certain Italian humanists as a pejorative to describe Medieval buildings, even churches, not showing the growing taste for classical details beloved by the Quatrocento. Certainly Durer himself, highly intelligent and skilled in several arts but not academically or professionally educated like Pirckheimer, proved himself an apt pupil and was able to represent, in pictorial terms, like that polyhedron in that 1514 copper plate engraving, Platonic concepts that, by word, would take many paragraphs or even essays to describe.
Many ancient, Medieval and Renaissance philosophers and men of letters interested in creative acts, constantly wrote about the "temperaments" of which 'melancholy' was one. Obviously our present day meaning, calling forth mental links with dejection or even a mild depression, are NOT what Durer or his associates had in mind. Durer, as you pointed out, was interested in geometrical forms indicative of certain Neo-Platonic concepts and even the "humours" that were attached to modes of feeling and thought. You likely have heard of these "humours" which, well before even the vague beginnings of psychiatry or psychology, were often used to describe certain mind-body leanings or propensities. In fact, there are several instances from learned writings describing the "melancholic humour" and how it became evident in a given individual. Its unfortunate that Durer died when only in his later fifties, as he left many unfinished or undeveloped speculations amongst his manuscripts. Hope you do not find all this a crashing bore! My best, WWL
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REMARKS: This is not necessarily meant as a permanent posting but as a way to see if any DA members know the meaning or at least the iconography of this Albretch Durer print, customarily dated to 1514, during his mature print making period. Obviously VERY long essays have been written on just this single print, as well as monographs on the prints of this Deutsch-Ungarischer artist. This DA member first saw a high grade reproduction of this Renaissance print in high school well over 50 years ago in a book written by art critic and psychologist E. H. Gombrich. As an aside, the geometric trapezoidal form sitting in the background may have some tenuous link to the "shining trapezohedron" mentioned in one of the last weird tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) "The Haunter of the Dark" (1935). In addition, in the laboratories of the old Bell System in New York, experiments on crystal trapedohedrons and other enantiomorphic shapes were carried out by Dr. Alexander MacLean Nicolson and staff well before the end of the First World War. As Lovecraft avidly followed developments in scientific research from his early years onwards, was he aware of Dr. Nicolson's work and did this influence the tale mentioned years afterwards? WWL
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