Print

Melencholia I after Durer. The title of the print is inscribed on a scroll unrolled by a bat in the top left hand corner. A winged creature, holding a book on her lap and dividers in her right hand, is surrounded by various tools and scientific instruments.

Melencolia I has been the subject of various (and sometimes diverging) interpretations. Melancholy, one of the four humours was linked to insanity but also to creative genius. Consequently, the print has often been described as an allegorical representation of the intellectual situation of the artist and can thus, by extension, be envisaged as a spiritual self-portrait of Dürer.

Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Herschel Collection