Engraving, 1514. 240x187 mm; 9 1/2x7 3/8 inches. A superb, dark, richly-inked Meder II a impression, with the number "9" corrected in the third row of the number square upper right, with very strong contrasts and no sign of wear, with the face dark and all the finest details distinct. Trimmed on the plate mark with the border line preserved all around.
Dürer's Melencolia I, St. Jerome in his Study (see lot 39) and Knight, Death and the Devil (see lot 85), all from 1514 and related in size, style and technical complexity, have been considered his master engravings (or "meisterstiche") since their creation more than 500 years ago. Replete with symbols (some understood and some unknown) and brimming with psychological content, Melencolia I is perhaps the most heavily studied and written about image in the history of art next to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Melencolia I has been described as representing the contemplative life, and more specifically the melancholic pitfalls of an overly intellectual, creative temperament, with the large seated figure in the engraving possibly an allegory of the artist himself.
Certainly an event that shaped Dürer's life and his outlook during this period was the illness and subsequent death of his mother on May 16, 1514. Whatever part this played in his creation of Melencolia I, it is clear from his diary entries and a moving charcoal portrait of his mother from 1514 (now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), in which he detailed her illness, that her death weighed heavily on his mind leading up to and during the creation of this engraving. Scholars have suggested that Melencolia I and Virgin and Child by the Wall, engraving, 1514 (see lot 36) are both memorials to Barbara Dürer.
While modern scholars often group Dürer's three master engravings from 1514 together, suggesting they were conceived as a set by the artist and comercially offered as such, this was evidently not the artist's intent (though the Roman numeral "I" in the title of the current work also suggests Dürer had a series in mind). He often sold impressions of Melencolia I and St. Jerome in his Study together, though this is likely due to their highly recognized importance even during his life and their contemporaneous creation. Bartsch 74; Meder 75.
