Melencolia I

1514

Albrecht Dürer

Artist, German, 1471 - 1528

Created with fine black lines printed on an ivory-white paper, a winged woman sits with her head in one hand, surrounded by tools, a dog, and a baby-like, winged putto perched on a millstone, all in front of a distant landscape with a still body of water under an arched rainbow in this vertical engraving. Filling the lower right quadrant of the composition, the winged woman, Melencolia, sits with her body angled to our left, and she looks in that direction from under furrowed brows. Lit from our right, her face is cast in shadow, but she has a straight nose and her lips are closed. She wears a ring of leaves over hair that falls in waves over her shoulders. Wings curve up from her back, and she wears a long-sleeved dress with a tight bodice and a voluminous, pleated skirt. She rests her chin on one tightly closed fist. The other arm rests on a book in her lap, and she holds one of the two legs of a tall compass in that hand. Several keys hang on a ribbon looped onto her belt, and they nestle into the deep folds of her skirt. Around her feet are a purse cinched closed, several nails, the metal tip of a bellows, a saw, a plane, the end of a pair of pincers, an ink pot, a molder’s form for baseboards, and a round sphere about the size of a basketball. The dog lies in a tight circle to our left of Melencolia’s feet, its chin resting across its paws. The dog’s ribs show through the short fur of its hide. Next to the dog, the millstone leans against the building that fills the right half of the composition. The millstone is round and flat, is about the height of the woman's torso, and a hole is cut from its center. A chubby child sits atop the stone. It has short, curly hair, stubby wings, a loose robe, and it draws on a tablet propped on its lap. Beyond the child, a wooden ladder leans against the building, and a pair of scales hangs above his head. On the face of the building, hanging over Melencolia’s head, is an hourglass with the sand about halfway spent and a magic square, which is a grid of four rows and four columns. The numbers in the grid read, from left to right, 16, 3, 2, 13 in the top row; an upside down 5, a 10, 11, and 8 in the second row; a backward 9, a 6, 7, and 12 in the third row; and a 4, 15, 14, and 1 in the bottom row. A bell hangs from a ring above this grid. On the step beyond the sleeping dog and millstone, another large stone is carved into flat planes to create an irregular, geometric, rhomboid form about as tall as the millstone. A hammer lies in front of the rhomboid, and beyond it is a melting pot sitting among tongues of flame in a mug-like cup. In the upper left quadrant of the composition, a placid body of water leads back to a distant town and small boats, beneath a starburst that fills the sky. An arched rainbow crosses the sky over a rat-like bat with its sharp teeth and tongue showing. It holds a banner reading “MELENCOLIA I.” The artist signed and dated the engraving as if he had carved into the front face of the step on which Melencolia sits, near the lower right corner: “1514 AD,” with the uppercase D nestled between the long legs of the wide, uppercase A.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    engraving on laid paper

  • Credit Line

    Gift of R. Horace Gallatin

  • Dimensions

    sheet (trimmed to plate mark): 24.5 x 19.2 cm (9 5/8 x 7 9/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1949.1.17

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Meder, no. 75, state i/ii


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Knoedler & Co., New York); purchased 1924 by R. Horace Gallatin [1871 - 1948], New York; gift to NGA, 1949.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1949

  • R. Horace Gallatin Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1949, no cat.

1964

  • Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century German Prints from the National Gallery of Art Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1964-1965, no cat.

1967

  • Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century German Prints from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1967, no cat.

1971

  • Prints by Albrecht Durer, Birmingham Museum of Art, AL, 1971, no cat.

1983

  • Graphic Survey Show, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 1983.

Bibliography

1932

  • Meder, Joseph. Dürer-Katalog; ein Handbuch über Albrecht Dürers Stiche, Radierungen, Holzschnitte, deren Zustände, Ausgaben und Wasserzeichen. Vienna: Verlag Gilhofer und Ranschburg, 1932. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971, no. 75.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington, D.C., 1992: 316, repro.

2001

  • Schoch, Rainer, Mattihas Mende, and Anna Scherbaum. Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Munich, 2001: vol. 1: no. 71, state i/ii.

Inscriptions

in plate, lower right: 1514 / AD [artist's monogram]; verso, center, in brown ink by a later hand: B 16 [?] [crossed out] / [illegible] 19 [illegible]; verso, lower center, in graphite by a later hand: C. 12819; verso, lower right, in graphite by a later hand: 8 [faded]; verso, lower center, in graphite by a later hand: B 74 [underlined]; verso, bottom left, in graphite by a later hand: K.4353 / C.4839; verso, bottom left, in graphite by a later hand: B-15, 233

Watermarks

none visible

Wikidata ID

Q1362177


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