There is a spelling mistake on this print. Dürer engraved MELENCOLIA — with an “e” where an “a” belongs. Nobody knows whether it was an error or a device. Scholars have tried reading it as an anagram and as a cipher; one hypothesis holds that the “I” is not a numeral at all but a…
The painting these hands were drawn for burned. Dürer spent more than a year on it and quarrelled with his client about money throughout — he wrote that painting this carefully did not pay, and that he would not take such work again. The panel was later sold to Bavaria and destroyed in a fire…
In the year 1500, a 28-year-old German painter looked into a mirror and painted himself in a pose that his contemporaries reserved for one subject only: Christ. Dürer’s Self-Portrait was audacious enough that art historians still argue over whether it was piety, arrogance, or something close to blasphemy. Quick Facts Artist: Albrecht Dürer Year: 1500…