A New Look at Melencolia I - D. Pingree

A New Look at Melencolia IAuthor(s): David PingreeSource: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 43 (1980), pp. 257-258Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/751203 .Accessed: 06/04/2014 16:26

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MELENCOLIA I 257 A NEW LOOK AT MELENCOLIA I

U ponrecently reading William Heckscher's fascinating study ofCamerarius's description of Dfirer's Melencolia I,x I was led to consider some interpretations of this enig- matic print (P1. 35c) which I believe have not been noticed hitherto. I present them in this note for others more expert than I both in iconography and in Diirer's art to appreciate or to deprecate. Certainly I do not pretend to have any evidence that these meanings were intended by the artist.

The basis of the new interpretations is a consideration of the composition as a whole, whereas previously scholars have tended to concentrate on individual elements.2 Three linked states of being are represented in the print (P1. 35c) : the celestial occupies the upper third, including both the celestial body to the viewer's left and the upper parts of the ladder and tower to his right; the terrestrial is depicted in the centre left; and an intermediate state appears in the centre right and lower third. The two main figures in the print-the block of stone and Melancholy herself-are located in the intermediate state.

I begin to justify this analysis by the observation that the celestial body in the upper left quadrant of the print must be a star or a planet rather than the comet that it is usually interpreted to be. This is indicated by the rays extending from it in all directions to the limits of the visual field. These are not, however, rays of light; for the presence of the rainbow, eccentric to the celestial body, shows that the Sun has not yet set but is in the west-in the direction from which the viewer beholds the scene- while the celestial body itself is rising in the East.3 The rays are rather those by which, according to astral magic, the planets effect their influence in the sub-celestial world.4 In

a depiction of Melancholy, the celestial body emitting magical rays can only be Saturn.

In the same plane with Saturn are two other celestial symbols.5 To the right is the magic square of Jupiter, whose influence must be combined with Saturn's to produce the melancholic philosopher;6 and in the centre hang the scales of Libra, the exaltation of Saturn. The upper third of the picture, then, represents the celestial configuration under which Saturn is most effective in producing philosophers: Saturn is rising in its exaltation in association with Jupiter.

Above the frame of the print extends the supercelestial world, which is, quite literally, imperceptible to us. Into this lead the ladder and the tower. The latter is, as Heckscher shows, a House of Wisdom; more specifically, it symbolizes the intellectual mode of ascent to the supercelestial, as the ladder refers to ascent by faith.' The intellectual character of the tower is indicated by the four objects hung on its exterior wall, which represent the external or practical aspects of the quadrivium. The scales represent the Arith- metic of weighing and measuring; the hour- glass the Astronomy of time-keeping; the bell the Music of rhythmic sound; and the magic square the Geometry of the lines, squares and

1 W. S. Heckscher, 'Melancholia (0541). An Essay in the Rhetoric of Description byJoachim Camerarius', Joachim Camerarius (15oo-1574), ed. F. Baron, Munich 1978, pp. 31-120.

2 E.g., R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, London 1964. 3 The Sun is I8o0 from the centre of the circle of which the rainbow is an arc; that centre is below the horizon.

'A doctrine first enunciated by al-Kindi (see M.-Th. d'Alverny and F. Hudry, 'Al-Kindi De radiis', Archives d'histoire doctrinale, xli, 1974, pp. 139- 260); and developed by the author of the Ghdyat al-

.hakim (e.g., i 3, 1; ii 7, I-8; and iii 5, 5 in my forth-

coming edition of the Latin Picatrix). It has often been argued that Duirer received any knowledge that he might have had of Picatrician magic through a manuscript of the early version of Agrippa's De occulta philosophia as found in the Wilrzburg manuscript (a

facsimile is published in K. A. Nowotny, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa ab NJettesheym De occulta philosophia, Graz 1967, pp. 519-86). However, it is possible that Diirer may have seen a copy of the Picatrix in Italy, perhaps on his second journey. An indication of this may be the fact that he includes two Saturnine animals in Melencolia I, a bat and a dog; only the former is mentioned in the Wiirzburg manuscript (fols. 17-I8r on p. 527 Nowotny), but the bat is Saturnine in Picatrix iii 8, 2, the dog in iv I, 3.

For another representation of the rays of planetary influence, see ill. 37 in Klibansky, Panofsky, Saxl (n. 2 above).

5 It may be objected that, because we do not nor- mally find Jupiter represented by his magic square or Libra by its scales in engravings, therefore we ought not to find them so represented in Melencolia I. I would rephrase this objection thus: because we do not nor- mally find Jupiter and Libra so represented, therefore we did not recognize them until some learned scholars pointed out to us their presence. If Duirer had expres- sed himself in conventional terms, the Melencolia I would not have puzzled its beholders. The fact that the engraving is an enigma should alert us to the fact that Diirer meant us to use the intellectual capacity symbolized by Melancholia herself in attempting to understand the meaning of her image. Our awareness of this intention should not convince us of the correct- ness of any particular interpretation, but should deter us from relying to any great extent on the conventions followed by artists contemporary with Duirer to help us in understanding his unique creation. 6 See, e.g., Ficino cited in Klibansky, Panofsky, Saxl (n. 2 above), pp. 271-3.

7 Heckscher, pp. 54-59-


258 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

triangles that constitute that particular object.s The seascape with its fringe of inhabited

land clearly represents our sublunar world; the four elements are also indicated, fire and air above earth and water. The scene in the foreground, then, bounded by the block of stone on the left and by Melancholy herself on the right, lies between this world and the heavens. It represents those hypostases placed by some Neoplatonists and astral magicians between the spiritual and the material worlds, wherein, under celestial influence, the elements9 and the human spiritus'0 are formed. In fact, Diirer shows under Saturn what appears to be an inchoate octahedron, the second of Plato's five perfect solids,"1 though others have interpreted it, less persuasively, as a truncated cube.12 In one passage in the Timaeus (53c) the second of the elements is earth, which possesses the two qualities of Saturn, dryness and cold; in another passage (55d) the cube is assigned to earth. The artist shows under Jupiter Melan- choly herself, the intellectual temperament produced by Saturn in conjunction with Jupiter. And under Libra sits a winged putto, the melancholic and philosophic native to be. Scattered on the ground are the tools of the demiurge.

One other observation deserves to be made. The ladder of faith leads up into the supercelestial from behind inchoate matter, while the tower of intellect rises up behind Melan- choly and the unborn philosopher. Excursus on Rays in Diirer's Woodcuts and Engravings

In his woodcuts and engravings Dorer

rarely uses rays to indicate natural light as he seldom portrays the luminous bodies occurring in nature. The Sun may have short, fiery rays as in the Crucifixion in the early Great Passion; and a star may have short rays as in the Adoration of the Shepherds from the Small Passion (1509), or it may have no rays at all as in the Adoration of the Magi (I15 I). But usually the rays in DUrer's early works emanate from divine beings and represent their visible effulgence; cf., among engravings, the Holy Family with a Butterfly (1495/6), the Virgin on the Crescent (1498?), the Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1500), Justice (c. 1501), the Virgin with a Starry Crown (1508), and Christ on the Mount of Olives (15o8).

This use of limited rays continued to the end of Diirer's career. But, beginning with the Small Passion in 1509, Durer also some- times showed the divine with unlimited rays. In the Small Passion itself one notes this in Christ Appears to His Mother, Christ at Emmaus, the Incredulity of St. Thomas, Christ Appears to Mary Magdalene, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and the Last Judgment. In one woodcut of this series, the Annunciation, rays link God the Father to the Holy Spirit. Other woodcuts and engravings in which the divine have unlimited rays include the new title-page to the Apocalypse (1511), the title-page to the Life of the Virgin (I51I), the Holy Trinity (15 I1), the Resurrection of Christ (1512), the Virgin and the Carthusian Monks (1515), the Virgin Suckling the Child (1519), the Virgin with the Child in Swaddling Clothes (1520), and the Virgin Crowned by an Angel (1520). This distinction between the short, limited rays of visible effulgence and the unlimited rays of the divine in certain contexts suggests that the latter represent not light rays, but rays of divine energy.

In many of the depictions of the unlimited divine rays those rays are 'brighter' in three directions 960 apart; this is reminiscent of the depictions of the limited visible effulgence. In Melencolia I the rays emanating from the celestial body are unlimited; and they are clearly 'brighter' in two directions 900 apart, just barely 'brighter' in the third. Within the context of Diirer's symbolic use of rays, then, the celestial body in Melencolia I does not cast light rays, but rays of divine energy. The interpretation I have given above would indicate that they are, in fact, creative rays emanating from the Divine through the planet Saturn.

DAVID PINGREE Brown University, Providence, R.I.

8 To construct this square, one begins with the following figure of four lines and four columns, each of which contains four segments.

(a) 16 15 14 13-- (b) -*5 6 7 8 (c) 9 10 Ix 12 (d)

-4 3 2 I The central pairs of segments in lines (a) and (d) and in lines (b) and (c) are interchanged to produce the magic square, in which the numbers in each line, each column and each diagonal add up to 34 (2 X I7). Furthermore, each of the four squares at the corners of the figure contains numbers adding up to 34. The square of four segments in the centre also contains numbers adding up to 34: the outer square of numbers that is left after removing this central square can be divided into four triangles, of which each contains three segments. The sum of the numbers in each pair of opposite triangles is 51 (3 x I7). Concerning the role of the quadrivium in the education of the perfect philosopher, see, e.g., Picatrix ii, I, 3.

E.g., Picatrix i 7. 10 E.g., Picatrix iv I, i. 11 Timaeus 55a. 12 See Klibansky, Panofsky, Saxl, pp. 400-02.


a-Statue of Anna Galeria Faustina the Younger. Tolen- tino, Palazzo Sangallo (p. 250, n. 31)

b-Statue of Anna Galeria Faustina the Younger (from Santini, Saggio . . ., 1789, pl. A) (p. 250, n. 31)

c --Albrecht Ditrer, Melencolia I (p. 257)

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Article Contentsp. 257p. 258[unnumbered]

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 43 (1980), pp. 1-270Volume Information [pp. 266-269]Front MatterSome of the Sources of the Ghyat al-hakm [pp. 1-15]Bernard Silvestris, Natura, and Personification [pp. 16-31]The Reconstructed Toledo Speculum Humanae Salvationis: The Italian Connection in the Early Fourteenth Century [pp. 32-51]The Windmill Psalter: The Historiated Letter E of Psalm One [pp. 52-67]Leon Battista Alberti's System of Human Proportions [pp. 68-96]The Influence of Hermias on Marsilio Ficino's Doctrine of Inspiration [pp. 97-109]Two Commentaries on the Phaedrus: Ficino's Indebtedness to Hermias [pp. 110-129]Golden Age and Justice in Sixteenth-Century Florentine Political Thought and Imagery: Observations on Three Pictures by Jacopo Zucchi [pp. 130-149]Greek Sculpture and Roman Copies I: Anton Raphael Mengs and the Eighteenth Century [pp. 150-173]An Aspect of the Early Gothic Revival: The Transformation of Medievalist Research, 1770-1800 [pp. 174-185]The 'Spectre' of Science. The Study of Optical Phenomena and the Romantic Imagination [pp. 186-200]The Growth of Interest in Early Italian Painting in Britain: George Darley and the Athenaeum, 1834-1846 [pp. 201-220]Notes and DocumentsEve as Reason in a Tradition of Allegorical Interpretation of the Fall [pp. 221-226]Mechanical Wheels of Fortune, 1100-1547 [pp. 227-233]Tomaso da Modena, Simone Martini, Hungarians and St. Martin in Fourteenth-Century Italy [pp. 234-238]The Book of Wisdom and Lorenzetti's Fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena [pp. 239-241]Cyriacus of Ancona and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II [pp. 242-246]Giovanni da Tolentino Goes to Rome: A Description of the Antiquities of Rome in 1490 [pp. 246-256]A New Look at Melencolia I [pp. 257-258]The Winged Bacchus (Pausanias, Rabelais and Later Emblematists) [pp. 259-262]A Scholion by Hermias to Plato's Phaedrus and Its Adaptations in Pietro Testa's Blinding of Homer and in Politian's Ambra [pp. 262-265]

Back Matter [pp. 270-270]

A New Look at Melencolia I - D. Pingree

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