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Your galleryMelencolia I
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Find the square of numbers on the wall, then the comet and rainbow, the bat carrying the title and the thin dog asleep at left.
A winged figure of Melancholy sits slumped, head on hand, holding a compass among tools of geometry she does not use. Renaissance thinkers linked the melancholy temperament, long thought the least fortunate, with creative genius, and the Met sees in the print a self-portrait of Dürer’s inner life. The Cleveland Museum of Art points to the magic square on the wall, whose numbers add up to 34 in every direction.
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper · Image: 24.1 × 18.7 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Northern Renaissance
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Melencolia I
- Artist
- Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528
- Date
- 1514
- Medium
- Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 24.1 × 18.7 cm (9 1/2 × 7 3/8 in.); Plate: 24.3 × 19 cm (9 5/8 × 7 1/2 in.); Sheet: 25.1 × 19.8 cm (9 15/16 × 7 13/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Artist’s life 1471–1528
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.