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More about Perfection's Therapy - An Essay on Albrecht Durer's Melencolia I

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Book synopsis

Albrecht Dürer's famous portrayal of creative effort in paralysis, the unsurpassed masterpiece of copperplate engraving titled Melencolia I, has stood for centuries as a pictorial summa of knowledge about the melancholic temperament, a dense allegory of the limits of earthbound arts and sciences and the impossibility of attaining perfection. In Perfection's Therapy, Mitchell Merback reopens the case file and argues for a hidden intentionality in Melencolia's opacity, its structural "chaos," and its resistance to allegorical closure. That intentionality, he argues, points toward a fascinating possibility never before considered: that Dürer's masterpiece is not only an arresting diagnosis of melancholic distress, but an innovative instrument for its undoing. Merback deftly resituates Dürer's image within the long history of the therapeutic artifact. Placing Dürer's therapeutic project in dialogue with that of humanism's founder, Francesco Petrarch, Merback also unearths Dürer's ambition to act as a physician of the soul.

Book details

Book category Books in English The arts History of art / art & design styles History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600

• Full title: Perfection's Therapy - An Essay on Albrecht Durer's Melencolia I
• Author: Mitchell B. Merback
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardback
• Number of pages: 360
• EAN: 9781942130000
• ISBN: 9781942130000
• ID: 16086028
• Publisher: Zone Books
• Weight: 634 g
• Dimensions: 231 × 164 × 28 mm
• Date of publishing: 02. January 2018

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