Melencolia I

Dürer cut this into a copper plate in 1514, and he signed the date inside the picture in an odd way. High on the wall is a grid of numbers, a magic square where every row, column and diagonal adds up to 34, and along the bottom row the two middle numbers read 15 and 14. A winged figure sits slumped among the tools of measurement and building, a compass idle in her hand, surrounded by things she could use and is not using. In Dürer's time melancholy was thought to be the temperament of the thinker and the artist, the mood that came with real intelligence, a gift and an affliction at once. There is a many-sided stone block beside her that geometers still argue about, and it has no obvious purpose. He made this the same year his mother died, and put the number one in the title, as if he meant it to be the first of a set he never went on to make.