Duerer Engraves Melencolia I

1514

In Nuremberg the goldsmith-printmaker Albrecht Duerer cut an engraving of a winged figure slumped amid compasses, geometrical solids, and a hungry dog. Melencolia I fused alchemy, mathematics, and northern melancholy into a single baffling image. Scholars have been puzzling over its meaning ever since. Its magic square and truncated polyhedron have generated theories ranging from alchemical allegory to a meditation on the limits of knowledge.