Comments on: Image of the Day : Melencolia by Albrecht Dürer

By: Hello It's me but I'm not there

Hello It's me but I'm not there — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:43:08 +0000

Yeah, I know that!
Melancholia and the infinite sadness,
the kind of deep state o mind that makes u feel so close to death,
and even that gives u great energy to creat and turn this feeling into what u can call HE-art.
It’s awful nice as life can be sometimes.
It’s also very mysterious, it happens and then disappears.
I think its important to know about what our heart gives us.
Even if it’s not a feeling that makes u good, at least u feel and your heart beats then U R ALIVE!
and it’s good to be alive;)
is it? :D

Love
Damien

By: austere

austere — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:33:20 +0000

This is PERFECT!
Right on the dot.
Digging deeper into the quagmire, weighed down by a cross only you can see…every effort to break free pulling you deeper.

By: Nia Wind

Nia Wind — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:34:14 +0000

Didn´t anybody see the lamb???
I do…
;-))

Nia

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:48:52 +0000

I often associate myself with this word, more often then not.

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:14:54 +0000

The keys and purse of the Angel are apparently the only elements in the engraving whose
meaning has been left us by D¨urer. They stand for power and wealth. But while his
Madonna and his Venus wear their purses and keys at the waist, the Angel drags her purse
on the ground. This difference calls for interpretation. Likely it means that theology is
profaned by fiscal power, for D¨urer was a passionate critic of clerical corruption

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:14:05 +0000

We must turn the engraving about 60 counterclockwise to see First Fool best and
then he looks to our right. His nose forms part of the bottom edge of the Angel’s robe. He
has a mustache.
A powerful winged housewife with a fool in her hem is not a standard symbol, but D¨urer
helpfully used it twice. In the woodcut Von Buolschafft (On Amours) attributed to D¨urer,
the winged housewife is Venus, the goddess of the fools of love, the most common variety
of fool according to Brant ([2], Chapter 13, On Amours (Von Buolschaft)). Venus’s wings
are those of an eagle signifying fame, not those of an angel signifying divinity. We know
she is a housewife because Brant calls her sarcastically “Frau Venus.” “Frau” is evidently
no term of respect for D¨urer or Brant. The caricature in her hem is so crude that I hoped
it was accidental, but since it recurs, these fools-in-winged-housewives’-hems are probably
not accidents but part of D¨urer’s graphic language.
Evidently the Angel is also presented as a housewife, not in so many words but by her
purse, keys, and what seems to be a spindle dangling down her dress from her left knee.
The Madonna by the Wall (D¨urer 1514) also wears the keys and purse of a housewife. D¨urer
seems to say that the Theological Philosopher too attracts fools. This echoes and amplifies
doctrines already expressed by Nicholas of Cusa[27] and Erasmus[9]and later written down
by Agrippa [1].
The quaternities of the Prophets and of the Ghosts are also in the theological realm.
It is not clear at this point whether D¨urer means quaternity to imply divinity. First Fool
provides a useful litmus indicator for this. If the Fool is a quadruple fool then likely D¨urer
does not reserve quaternity for the divine. So I looked for other Fools.
• It is then easy to see the larger face of Second Fool looking slightly to our left. Second
Fool has curled hair that suggests a woman.
• Third Fool is looking upward and to our left. Unlike First Fool and Second Fool,
Third Fool has a body, a complete arm with a mitten-like hand at his side, a leg, and the
purse of the Angel.
This set me to search for ambiguous trinities in the Intellectual World and to find Third
Ghost, already mentioned. But in fact there are four Fools.
• Fourth Fool stands upright to the left of the others, wearing a robe from head to
ground, looking almost right at us.

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:07:41 +0000

The matrix of numbers set into the masonry wall in MELENCOLIA I like a window lattice
is a magic square, meaning that it is filled with consecutive numbers starting from 1 and
every row, every column, and both main diagonals add up to the same number. In a 4 × 4
magic square that number must be one quarter the sum of the integers from 1 to 16, which
is 34. This magic square is a gnomon magic square. This means that in addition its four
quadrants, its four corners, and its central tetrad add up to the same number. Usually a
gnomon means a pointer or indicator, especially of a sundial. A carpenter’s square was also
called a gnomon, perhaps because it looks like a crude picture of a pointing hand. This
kind of magic square is called a gnomon, I suppose, because removing a quadrant leaves
a figure that resembles a carpenter’s square. In addition, the sum of any pair of numbers
symmetric about the center of this square is 17.

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:07:17 +0000

MELENCOLIA I.1
David Ritz Finkelstein

c 2007
January 10, 2007
1
Figure 1: MELENCOLIA I.0, A. D¨urer, 1514
2