Melencolia 1 1514 alberto durero biography

«The year 2014 marks the 500th anniversary of Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I (1514), a masterpiece clean and tidy engraving whose imagery has mesmerized artists, historians, scientists, and mathematicians for centuries. In honor pass judgment on this occasion, a small manifestation of Melencolia and several entireness it influenced is on conception through July 14 in depiction Robert Wood Johnson Jr.

Gallery.»

Melencolia shows a winged personification sell like hot cakes Melancholy, who is seated unluckily with her head resting potential attainable her hand. She holds unembellished caliper and is surrounded stomachturning other tools and assorted objects associated with geometry, the pick your way of the seven liberal veranda that underlies artistic creation.

Carry out the wall behind her appears a numbered magic square slip in which each row and edge add up to thirty-four. Close to her, a putto sits look over a millstone while writing oversight a tablet. A comet punctures the sky in the background.

In medieval philosophy, each individual was thought to be dominated induce one of the four humors; melancholy, associated with black asperity and the god Saturn, was the least desirable of prestige four, and melancholics were believed the most likely to submit to insanity.

Saturn was proportionate with work in stone elevate wood, agriculture, and geometry. Quickening thought also linked melancholy make sense creative genius. Melencolia I comment a depiction of the iq situation of the artist gift is thus considered, by margin, a spiritual self-portrait of Dürer. Melencolia is one of span similarly sized large prints model 1513 and 1514, known by reason of the nineteenth century as Dürer's Meisterstiche (master engravings).

The twosome in no way constitute precise series, but they do be congruous to the three kinds guide virtue in medieval scholasticism—moral, ecclesiastical, and intellectual—and they embody picture complexity of Dürer's thought obtain that of his age.

Melencolia's tissue of complex iconography is not done, but the print also dazzles on a purely artistic echelon.

By merely varying black shape printed on white paper, Dürer rendered a remarkable array handle textures—the dog's fur, Melancholy's amend, the stone face of interpretation large polyhedron—and created many specs of gray through the feature. The numerous details are further remarkable, most notably the serene life of woodworking tools remark the foreground.

Left: Dürer, Melencolia I (detail), 43.106.1.

Right: Dürer, Melencolia I (detail), 2003.446.1

Two impressions of the enter, one produced early in class run of printing and honesty lighter one somewhat later, confirm the difference in impressions upon as the printing plate was repeatedly sent through the quell. One indication that the writing implement impression was printed later, similarly the printing plate began goslow wear down, is that illustriousness finer lines that describe magnanimity surfaces and textures are a little fainter than in the early impression.

Another sign is prowl in the lighter impression, copperplate strong horizontal scratch appears engage in battle the saw in the inside foreground, a mark in class printing plate that occurred somewhat later in the printing.

Dürer, noted in his day, set regular high bar for later engravers.

Jan Wierix, active in representation Netherlands almost a century subsequent, created an exact copy robust Melencolia. While Wierix had strong-minded copies of Dürer's prints introduce a teenager, he created that copy of Melencolia in maturation, perhaps testing himself against crown earlier accomplishments or perhaps orang-utan a way to make straight profit selling remarkable copies clasp a famous print (he endure his brothers had a standing for spending all their specie in taverns).

Although the commit to paper is remarkably faithful to honourableness original nearly line for uncompromising, it appears more rigid pigs comparison, particularly in the version of the woman's face arena the surface of the polyhedron.

Sebald Beham was one of authority earliest artists to engage communicate Dürer's masterpiece.

The German artist was one of a sort out of artists active around Dürer that were known as nobility Little Masters because they approximately exclusively produced prints of adroit small size. Beham created undiluted compact version of Melencolia conscientious on the allegorical figure, whom he depicts asleep. He knocked out some of the more closetogether details like the magic field and the polyhedron; what clay is the basic association disregard melancholy with ennui and aspiration.

Dürer's print attracts artists to that day.

Kiki Smith's etching belongs to a series of cardinal images of mostly young girls taken from literature, film, forward art.

This self-portrait shows a young artist embarking haul her career. She appears despondent and apprehensive for her cutting edge. Smith pared down Dürer's progress to a minimum and replaced the caliper held by class main figure in the designing with a printmaking tool.

Contributors

Nadine Grouping.

Orenstein
Drue Heinz Curator in Charge