'Melancholy and the Mystery of Numbers: The Impact of Neoplatonism on the Work of Albrecht Dürer', Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Hilton New Orleans Riverside, 22-24 March 2018. (original) (raw)
Related papers
ALBRECHT DÜRER AND THE 16TH CENTURY MELANCHOLY
The International Visual Culture Review, 2, 2020, ISSN 2659 – 5923, 2020
Little has been discussed in academia about the close relationship between the Renaissance of the 16th century and melancholy humor, and esoteric elements arising mainly from Florentine Neoplatonism. The link between melancholy and esotericism becomes very clear when we analyze the gravure "Melencolia I" by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), composed of a significant number of symbols that refer to an esoteric religious culture that then emerged. Renaissance melancholy gained several nuances. On the one hand, it was considered a sin, a despicable mood characteristic of witches; on the other hand, a deep sense of inspiration typical of men of "genius". This ambivalence also occurred in the firmament, as the melancholic people were guided by the dark planet Saturn, according to astrological belief. We also have the cultural scenario of the 16th century, especially in Dürer's Germany, which contributed to strengthening the melancholy issues.
Albrecht Dürer’s fight against “neoplatonic” melancholy
2018
The one who knows to discern the temptation of the devil and Knows to resist it with the wisdom that God gave him The one who in all circumstance keeps his heart pure Has accepted the coronation of wisdom. And the one who really loves God Is a pure and pious Christian.
2007
Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I gives its viewers a rare glimpse into the Medieval and Renaissance “view” (psychological and aesthetic) of melancholia. Nevertheless the frame, which literally draws a line between the “real world” and the engraving, is unable to hold firm due to the uncanny, penetrating gaze of Melencolia, the winged female melancholic figure. Hers are not the downcast eyes formerly attributed to the melancholic or child of Saturn; she gazes outward beyond the frame, staring into that unknowable outer space. This paper argues that Dürer’s Melencolia I offers more than a medical, psychological or philosophical “moral” (by characterizing the melancholic as a sick or insane person, or a person worn down by thinking about geometry and architecture). Rather, it presents a melancholic Faustian figure with an age-old craving for forbidden or “uncanny” knowledge. Thus the primary focus here is on the uncanny nature of melancholia in Dürer’s Melencolia I; also explore...
Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 2024
The following paper proposes a parallel reading of Albrecht Dürer’s engraving ›Melencolia I‹ (1514) and Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s notion of real abstraction. It argues for a constitutive link between the abstractions operative in ›Melencolia I‹, in commodity exchange, and in certain formations of psychological suffering, most notably described in the psychoanalytic conception of melancholia theorized by Sigmund Freud and the subsequent Lacanian tradition. With and against the iconographic analysis put forward by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl in ›Saturn and Melancholy‹ (1964), this paper understands the engraving’s polyhedron as a pivot point in Dürer’s artwork and in art history in general – namely, as a stumbling block that indicates the negativity of abstraction through its very positive existence. Abstraction, understood in this specific sense, and contrary to classical ontology and epistemology can in fact constitute a world of real material social relations instantiated through acts (and failures) of exchange.
At the Threshold of Painting. The Man of Sorrows by Albrecht Dürer
Renaissance Meta-Painting, 2020
In one of the oldest paintings attributed to Dürer, the young artist leads the viewer with 1 strikinglypaintedstreaksoffreshbloodtothethresholdbetweenlifeanddeath(fig.1). The Man of Sorrows, now in the Karlsruhe Kunsthalle, is assumed to have originated in 1493 when he was a painter’s apprentice in Strasbourg – although Martin Schongauer, the master with whom he wanted to apprentice after his time in Colmar, had died just before Dürer’s arrival.2 The painting has been described as exemplary for his future master works.3 Scholarship has identified several potential models that Dürer might have looked to in the creation of this unique work, but the originality of the composition, especially regarding the polyvalence of the chosen space (the cave of his tomb, a potential reference to the side wound, or the threshold between earthly and heavenly realms), and the chosen moment (before or after his resurrection) has not been dealt with adequately. This contribution will first argue that the paradoxical representation of fresh blood traces on Christ’s body and crucifixion wounds is a mode of artistic play that Dürer employed in order to conflate temporal and spatial layers combined in this painting. Dürer uses blood as a ‘marker’ to emphasize the edge: the shift from Christ’s earthly to eternal life, the transition of his body from visible to invisible, and the threshold between the terrestrial cave and the hereafter. The second point reconsiders whether Dürer’s painting was made within the context of his evident strive for ‘naturalistic representation’, as has been demonstrated by Stephanie Buck, Daniel Hess and Stephanie Porras. The panel might also be read as an expression of the artist’s intention to demonstrate the power and limits of mimetic representation of time and space. In my third point, I show how Dürer was actively engaging in artistic exploration of what ‘representation’ could be. Although we have no written statements by the artist from this decade, I am using his later comments on colour as a model how his contemporaries and beholders at the beginning of sixteenth century might have seen, read, and understood Dürer’s double-sided composition. The front showing the Man of Sorrows, along with the interpretation of the back as a colour experiment, places Dürer’s early masterpiece in a wider cultural context of artistic endeavors exploring the threshold between human and divine creation – a cultural context defined by theology, alchemy, and incipient art discourse.
MELANCHOLY AS A THEME IN GIORGIO DE CHIRICO’S EARLY METAPHYSICAL PAINTINGS (1910-1915)
MELANCHOLY AS A THEME IN GIORGIO DE CHIRICO’S EARLY METAPHYSICAL PAINTINGS (1910-1915), 2022
In this thesis, I will examine how melancholia, which has been characterized in different ways throughout the ages, was handled as a theme in the pre-1915 metaphysical paintings of Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, in particular, the origins of the iconographic elements he used in the works of this period. I will discuss them within the framework of his personal life history, chronic illnesses, and the effect of two important names who had influenced his art both visually and intellectually, Arnold Böcklin and Friedrich Nietzsche. De Chirico described himself as a melancholic, and we see the huge impact of melancholy on his art. The visual grammar of the artist's metaphysical paintings is quite unique. Thanks to this visual metaphysical language, we can see that he created both melancholic and enigmatic atmosphere in his works. In order to create this atmosphere, he used many iconographic elements. As a result of the examinations, we see that the source of these iconographic elements is sometimes his own personal history, sometimes the influence of Böcklin but mostly Nietzsche. In addition to his admiration and passion for Nietzsche, de Chirico also saw himself as the substitute for him and his bond with Nietzsche accompanied him throughout his life. So we can say that de Chirico's depictions of melancholy have a peerless place in the history of art. However, we should add that it is very difficult to interpret the works of the painter without knowing the factors that constitute the personal history, artistic and philosophical background of the artist. Keywords: Giorgio de Chirico, Melancholy, Metaphysical Painting, Enigma, Ariadne