Art Study - Durer – Melancholia I

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Durer – Melancholia I - 1514 A famous woodcut study of the depression that can assail the artistic genius, inducing apathy, indifference and writer’s (or artist’s) block. An angelic Muse sits slumped in despair, surrounded by scientific, geometric and artistic instruments, including a compass and a polyhedron as the sand pours out of a timer. A bat hovers, waving the banner of Melancholia I. This is not just a clever devise by which to name the painting (the only woodcut study by Durer to do so) but a demonstration that the artist is tormented by the bleak void of darkness and its seemingly supernatural creatures. The bat would later be much more directly associated with vampirism. Melancholia I, (one in Roman Numerals as much as a first person reference) refers to a philosophical theory by Durer’s German contemporary, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, that melancholic depression causes an artist’s imagination to over-power reason and mind. It becomes easier to imagine that which may not be really the case, while being unable to recognize that the imagined is really a delusion. This to Durer, as with Agrippa I the root cause of all mental health imbalance (a represented by the empty scales in the woodcut. The angel in despair is believed to be a feminized reflection of Durer, though others believe she represents the existential angst that prevented Da Vinci from completing many of his commissioned works and leaving his numerous inventions only half conceived. The Woodcut of Melancholia I http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg Arthur Chappell