Mystical systems
Melencolia I
Direct answer
Melencolia I is an engraving made by Albrecht Dürer in 1514, showing a winged figure sitting idle among the tools of geometry and building, beneath a four by four magic square.
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At a glance
- Also called
- durer melencolia, durer melancholia engraving
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Magic Square, Platonic Solids, Saturn, Golden Ratio
Melencolia I is an engraving made by Albrecht Dürer in 1514, showing a winged figure sitting idle among the tools of geometry and building, beneath a four by four magic square.
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What does Melencolia I mean?
The print shows a heavy winged figure with her head on her fist and a pair of compasses unused in her hand. Round her lie a plane, a saw, nails, a ball and a large stone solid with odd faces; a ladder leans on the building behind; scales, an hourglass and a bell hang on the wall. A bat-like creature carries the title across a sky lit by a comet and a rainbow.
On the wall is a magic square of sixteen numbers whose rows, columns and diagonals each add to 34. The two middle cells of its bottom row read 15 and 14, the year of the print. The usual reading takes the figure as the melancholy of the maker: a mind equipped with every instrument of measure and unable to act. What the letter or numeral I in the title means has never been settled.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Sacred geometry.
What sets Melencolia I apart
The engraving is a picture of geometry out of work. Every tool of measuring and making is present and none is in use, the compasses in the figure's hand are idle, and her eyes are fixed on nothing in the scene. The square on the wall is of the size Agrippa assigns to Jupiter, which some scholars read as a charm set against Saturn's gloom. Dürer arranged his so that the bottom row holds the date, one choice among the 880 squares of that size.
- Artist and date: Albrecht Dürer, Nuremberg, 1514
- Medium: engraving on copper, about 24 by 19 centimetres
- Magic square: four by four, every line adding to 34
- Hidden date: 15 and 14 in the middle of the bottom row
- Companion prints: Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513; Saint Jerome in His Study, 1514
- Influential reading: Erwin Panofsky, 1943, by way of Agrippa's three melancholies
Often mistaken for something else: Agrippa's planetary squares were meant for talismans; the square in Melencolia I is the same arithmetic placed in a work of art, with the date worked in.
The story behind Melencolia I
Dürer engraved it at Nuremberg in 1514, and it is grouped with two other prints of 1513 and 1514 as his master engravings. Renaissance writers, following Marsilio Ficino, tied melancholy to Saturn and to gifted minds. In 1943 Erwin Panofsky read the print through Agrippa's account of three grades of inspired melancholy, the first belonging to the imagination and so to artists, which would explain the I. The solid, often called Dürer's solid, is still discussed by mathematicians.
Why Melencolia I matters
Melencolia I is the best known meeting of geometry, the magic square and the temperament of Saturn in art, and it shows these ideas as an educated artist held them.
How to read Melencolia I
Art historians treat it as a puzzle of Renaissance symbolism; mathematicians cite its square and its solid; writers use it as the image of creative gloom.
Melencolia I in practice: an example
A reader can add any row of the square, then the four corners, then the four centre cells, and get 34 each time.
Where readings of Melencolia I go wrong
Dürer left no explanation, so every reading is an interpretation, and the print says nothing about the illness now called depression.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- melencolia i meaning, durer melencolia, melencolia i magic square, durer melancholia engraving, melencolia i symbolism
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does Melencolia I mean?
The title names melancholy, one of the four temperaments of old medicine, linked with Saturn and with thinkers and artists. The engraving is generally read as a picture of the gifted but stalled mind.
What is the magic square in Melencolia I?
It is a four by four square of the numbers 1 to 16 in which every row, column and long diagonal adds to 34. The date 1514 appears in the middle of the bottom row.
What is the strange solid in Dürer's Melencolia I?
It is an eight-faced block, usually described as a cube or rhombohedron with two opposite corners cut off. Dürer left no note on it, and its exact angles and its meaning are still argued over.
