The Emblem Shelf
Melencolia I
Genius, stalled, surrounded by its tools.
- Work
- engraving
- Maker
- Albrecht Dürer
- Date
- 1514
- Source
- Library of Congress · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A winged figure sits with her head on her hand, compass idle in her lap, surrounded by the tools of measuring and building: a plane, a saw, a ladder, scales, an hourglass, a bell, a square of numbers on the wall. Albrecht Dürer engraved Melencolia I in Nuremberg in 1514, and the date sits in the bottom row of the magic square. A bat-winged creature carries the title across a sky lit by a comet and a rainbow. Five centuries of readers have argued over what it means. This impression, in the Library of Congress, measures 23.6 by 18.5 centimetres, and every centimetre has been studied.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Melencolia I printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — engraving (1514), held by Library of Congress · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
