# Melencolia I > Albrecht Durer - 1514 (the plate; this sheet's own place within the plate's long printing history is not established by the sources consulted) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/albrecht-durer/durer-melencolia-i/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Albrecht Durer - **Date:** 1514 (the plate; this sheet's own place within the plate's long printing history is not established by the sources consulted) - **Medium:** Engraving on laid paper, no watermark on this sheet - **Dimensions:** Sheet, trimmed to image: 23.7 x 18.6 cm (9 5/16 x 7 5/16 in) - **Object type:** Print - **Period:** German, early sixteenth century (Northern Renaissance) - **Current location:** National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary This engraving is one of several hundred known surviving impressions of Melencolia I, the plate Albrecht Durer completed in 1514 and one of the three prints later grouped as his Meisterstiche, or master engravings. This particular sheet is a second-state impression, without a watermark, that carries two collectors' stamps: one belonging to the Paris illustrator and print collector Jean-Francois Gigoux (1806-1894), the other to the American collector Lessing J. Rosenwald, who bought it in 1928 and gave it, with the rest of his print collection, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1943.Between Gigoux's ownership and Rosenwald's purchase lies an undocumented gap of at least several decades, recorded here as unknown rather than bridged with a guess. What the sheet's own physical evidence can and cannot prove - a corrected numeral in its magic square, the absence of a watermark, two stamped marks and no others - is set out below against the wider print's documented market, its rarer first-state relatives, and a century of scholarly argument over what the image is actually about. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1514** Albrecht Durer, Nuremberg (the copper plate) `[documented]` (creation) The design is signed and dated in the plate: 1514 and Durer's AD monogram, lower right. The plate remained in use for printing long after Durer's death in 1528. Because this sheet carries no watermark and is a second-state, more common impression, no date narrower than printed at some point after the plate reached its second state can be assigned to this specific pull from the evidence available. - **undated** Unlocated `[unknown]` (gap) No owner or location is documented for this sheet between its printing and its appearance, at an undetermined date, in the collection of the Paris painter, illustrator, and collector Jean-Francois Gigoux (1806-1894), whose mark it carries. Whether the sheet was pulled within Durer's lifetime or afterward from the surviving plate is not established by the sources consulted. - **undated** Jean-Francois Gigoux (1806-1894), Paris `[documented]` (ownership) Gigoux's collector's mark, catalogued by Frits Lugt as Lugt 1164, is stamped on this sheet. Gigoux was a history painter and illustrator, best known for several hundred woodcuts supplied for an 1835 Paris edition of Lesage's Gil Blas, and an active collector of Old Master prints and drawings. At his death in 1894 he bequeathed the bulk of his holdings, more than 3,000 drawings and 460 paintings by one account, to the museum of his native Besancon; this engraving is not part of that bequest, so it left his collection by another route at a date this record cannot establish. - **-1928** Unrecorded intermediary `[unknown]` (gap) The National Gallery of Art's own provenance note moves directly from Gigoux to Rosenwald's 1928 acquisition without naming a dealer or intermediate owner. Since Gigoux died in 1894, at least one undocumented change of hands intervenes. - **1928-1943** Lessing J. Rosenwald (1891-1979), Jenkintown, Pennsylvania `[documented]` (purchase) Acquired by Rosenwald in 1928, the same year he bought his impression of Durer's Knight, Death and the Devil (now National Gallery of Art 1943.3.3519) at a C.G. Boerner sale in Leipzig. Rosenwald, who succeeded his father Julius Rosenwald as chairman of Sears, Roebuck in 1932, kept his growing collection at his private Alverthorpe Gallery in Jenkintown. His own collector's marks (Lugt 1760b and 1932d) are stamped on this sheet alongside Gigoux's. The price he paid in 1928 is not published in the sources consulted. - **1943-present** National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. `[documented]` (gift) Rosenwald pledged his print and drawing collection to the National Gallery of Art (and his rare books, separately, to the Library of Congress) in 1943, having already been a founding donor when the Gallery opened in 1941. He retained physical custody of most of the collection at Alverthorpe during his lifetime, transferring it in stages. This sheet carries the accession number 1943.3.3523 and the Rosenwald Collection credit line. The full Rosenwald print and drawing gift eventually totaled on the order of twenty-two to twenty-seven thousand sheets, sources consulted differ on the exact figure. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This impression of Melencolia I has never appeared at public auction. It was purchased by the collector Lessing J. Rosenwald in 1928, with no purchase price disclosed in the sources consulted, and entered the National Gallery of Art in 1943 as part of the Rosenwald gift, credited on the museum's own object record as Rosenwald Collection. Impressions of this engraving from other collections do come up at auction regularly, but a price for a different impression is not given here so it cannot be mistaken for a price achieved by this object. ## Open questions - Where was this sheet, and in whose hands, between its printing and its appearance in Jean-Francois Gigoux's collection at an undetermined date in the nineteenth century? No owner is documented for that span. - How and when did the sheet leave Gigoux's collection? It is not part of the bequest he left to the Besancon museum at his death in 1894, so it must have been sold or otherwise dispersed at an earlier or separate point that no source consulted here identifies. - Who was the intermediate owner or dealer, if any, between Gigoux and Rosenwald's 1928 purchase? The National Gallery of Art's own provenance note moves directly from one to the other. - What did Rosenwald pay for the sheet in 1928? Not published in the sources consulted. - Was this specific impression printed during Durer's own lifetime, before his death in 1528, or afterward from the surviving plate? Its second state alone does not resolve this, and it has not been reported as subjected to the microscopic scratch-chronology method that could in principle narrow the answer. - What was the result of the 19 March 2020 Sotheby's sale of the comparable Harris and Clark Art Institute impression? The estimate is documented but the hammer price and premium are not available in the source consulted. ## Sources - [1] National Gallery of Art, Washington, object page for Melencolia I, accession 1943.3.3523 (Rosenwald Collection). - [2] National Gallery of Art, Washington, object page for Melencolia I, accession 1949.1.17 (Gallatin gift, comparanda impression). - [3] National Gallery of Art, Washington, object page for Knight, Death and Devil, accession 1943.3.3519. - [4] National Gallery of Art, Washington, object page for Saint Jerome in His Study, accession 1943.3.3524. - [5] British Museum, collection object page for Melencolia I, registration 1912,1220.2. - [6] British Museum, collection object page for a print after Durer by Johannes Wierix, 1602, registration 1845,0809.527. - [7] Christie's, Melencolia I, Live Auction 21481, Old Master and 19th Century Prints, lot 27 (Albertina and Nanteuil de la Norville provenance). - [8] Sotheby's, Albrecht Durer, Melencolia I, Prints and Multiples, 19 March 2020, lot 11 (Harris and Clark Art Institute provenance). - [9] Swann Auction Galleries, Albrecht Durer, Melencolia I, lot 46, sale of 3 November 2022. - [10] Wikipedia, Melencolia I. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Meder's Durer-Katalog and Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl's Saturn and Melancholy directly. - [11] Wikipedia, Jean Gigoux. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Besancon museum's own catalogue of the Gigoux bequest. - [12] Wikipedia, Lessing J. Rosenwald. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the National Gallery of Art's own Rosenwald archive finding aid. - [13] Wikipedia, Albrecht Durer. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography. - [14] Angela Campbell, 'Meticulous Matrices: Building a Chronology of Albrecht Durer's Meisterstiche Impressions through the Analysis and Documentation of Microscopic Scratches in His Engraved Plates,' in Reassessing Epistemic Images in the Early Modern World (Amsterdam University Press). - [15] G. D. Schott, 'The Sick Durer - a Renaissance prototype pain map,' BMJ 329 (2004): 1492. - [16] Art UK, 'What is there that he cannot express in black lines alone? Durer's genius on paper' (for the Erasmus tribute). - [17] Wikipedia, Meisterstiche. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Panofsky's own published account of the grouping. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.