Page 295 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

scholarly note with the gourd (Cucurbita lage- 199 two heavenly phenomena studied by Reisch in
naria L.) hanging from the ceiling. This plant Albrecht Diirer different chapters. By adding various attributes,
was well known during the Middle Ages and Diirer effectively conveyed a mood, a state of
celebrated by many writers, including Walafrid Nuremberg, 1471-1528 mind, which is that of Melancholy lost in her
Strabo, who stressed its utility as a container for MELENCOLIA i thoughts. The many curious details with which
water or wine. Diirer's gourd, however, recalls a Melencolia 1 is filled have inspired complex inter-
famous controversy between Jerome and Saint 1514 pretations. Some scholars have sought meaning in
Augustine about the meaning of the Hebrew word engraving all the details of the engraving, citing as support-
3
3
ciceion or kikayon in Jonah 4:6. It was usually 24 x 18.7 (9 /s x y /s) ing evidence a preparatory sketch in the British
translated as "gourd/ but Jerome identified it references: Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl 1964, Museum, London, for the "putto" at Melan-
instead with the castor oil plant, for which he 254—373; Washington 1971, 145-146, no. 59, fig. choly's side, which bears an autograph inscription
knew no Greek or Latin equivalent; instead of 59; Strauss 1972, 166-169, no. 79; Strauss 1976, stating that "the key signifies power, the purse
218-224; Smith
19; Bialostocki
1986,
no.
1983,
111,
calling it a gourd (cucurbita), the saint used the 356-369, p/. xix; New York and Nuremberg 1986, riches/' This statement has traditionally been
word hedera (a type of ivy). When faced with the 312-313, no. 132 taken to allude to Melencolia i and to the purse
peculiar ivy-gourd in this Saint Jerome engraving, and the key hanging at Melancholy's side. The
Durer's learned friends likely grasped the philo- National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald possibility cannot be excluded, however, that it
logical point. Collection refers to another engraving altogether, that of a
Problems like the debate over the gourd were of peasant couple dancing, which Diirer executed
great interest to Renaissance scholars; humanism Diirer's Melancholy is a winged personification the same year.
was primarily concerned with establishing the surrounded by various more or less symbolic fea- Melencolia i is without doubt Durer's most
accurate text of ancient works, both biblical and tures. The artist took as his formal model a wood- perplexing work, especially if, as is often claimed,
classical. Much of Reformation theology depended cut from Gregor Reisch's Margarita philosophica it reflects Durer's own feelings of personal disar-
on reading the word ipsa as ipse in a crucial bibli- (Strasbourg, 1504) representing Geometry (Typus ray. Melancholy was one of the four humors that
cal passage. Contemporary viewers may also have Geometriae), one of the liberal arts; that personi- were believed to rule over human beings; the
seen the gourd, like the skull, hourglass, and fication is surrounded by various people recording other three were choler, phlegm, and the sanguine
extinguished candle, as symbols of transience. the position of the heavens, measuring, and draw- humor. According to the theory developed in
This concept too is found in Jonah (6:10), where ing plans. Diirer's familiarity with the 1504 wood- classical antiquity, which was widespread in the
we read that the gourd came up in a night and cut is confirmed by his use of another illustration Middle Ages and Renaissance, the melancholic
perished in a night. J.M.M. from the same book —a rainbow and a comet, humor was dry and cold, related to the element
earth, to autumn, and particularly to an age of
about sixty. It was generated by an excess of black
bile and produced various effects, including
depression.
The title given by Diirer to his engraving
seems to indicate that he meant it to form part of
a series, either of the Four Temperaments or of a
number of different forms of Melancholy. Various
authors have connected the print with one of
three types of Melancholy discussed by Cornelius
Agrippa von Nettesheim in his De occulta philo-
sophia, written in 1509-1510 but published, in a
revised form, only in 1531. Diirer could easily
have known the text through his friend Pirck-
heimer, who was a friend of Abbot Trithemius to
whom the book was dedicated. According to
Agrippa, Aristotle knew "that all men who have
distinguished themselves in any brand of knowl-
edge have generally been melancholies." This
"humor melancholicus," Agrippa relates, "occurs
in three different forms, corresponding to the
threefold capacity of our soul, namely the imagi-
native, the rational, and the mental." When "the
soul is fully concentrated in the imagination... it
immediately becomes an habitation for the lower
spirits, from which it often receives wonderful
instruction in the manual arts; thus we see a quite
unskilled man suddenly become a painter or an
architect, or a quite outstanding master in another
art of the same kind."
Erwin Panofsky concluded that Diirer repre-
sented the melancholy of the artist who is in con-
trol of geometrical principles but has no access

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