A possible reflection on Albrecht Dürer’s own life, Melencolia may represent Dürer’s struggles with his own intellect, perfectionism, & the high expectations brought upon him as an artist. Dürer represents himself as an androgynous winged figure with a build so muscular they couldn’t possibly be able to fly. The juxtaposition between their build & their wings may symbolize creative burnout during a hefty project.
As stated previously, I took the core composition of this piece to use in my own piece. I mostly referenced the way the main character, Melencolia, is sitting slumped over, but I also took other small details like how a large portion of the figure’s face is hidden by shade as well as the way the sun looks in this piece.
Adam & Eve by Albrecht Dürer depicts the biblical characters Adam & Eve, what a twist! Both figures are depicted very naturally in a place that could be Eden, however, the way their heads turn is very bizarre & uncanny looking. In fact this print holds a lot of weird contradictions like Eve taking an apple from what looks to be a fig tree; this contradiction could represent the imperfections of our world in comparison to Eden’s. Another thing to note are all the animals scattered about, like a cat, an ox, an elk, & the rabbit. All of these animals are representative of the 4 humors, they are dormant now, but will become imbalanced as soon as Eve takes a bite out of the forbidden fruit.
The inspiration I drew from this piece was the disguised symbolism of the 4 humors, with my piece specifically being composed to have exactly 4 characters to represent these humors. A general inspiration that can not only apply to this piece but the last one as well is the fact that they’re both black & white prints, which inspired the style of my masterpiece.
