ABSTRACT
Long regarded as the quintessential depiction of the solitary, suffering self, Dürer’s Melencolia I might actually depict precisely the opposite of solitude: community. Specifically, the angel’s temporary alignment with other agents on the scene, both sentient (a dog at rest, a bat in flight) and non-sentient (a mute stone, discarded tools) graphically depicts a mode of “being melancholy together” that unites highly disparate constituents along a conceptual and material continuum that includes weather systems, objects, animals, and persons. Then and now, Dürer’s image presents melancholy as a bonding agent.
