Albrecht Dürer (1571-1528), after - The Desperate Man

This strange image is now known just as sheet with five figures. Since it was one of Durer’s first etchings it could just be an amalgamated group of preoccupying doodles; artistic angst, the baleful influence of the shadow of Michelangelo (in the bust), women and drink (is that really a centaur?) and a comic mask for old age.

'This mysterious group of figures stands out in Dürer's work. The neutral title given here was first used by Bartsch in 1808, but the print has also been entitled 'The Dismayed Husband' (Hüsgen, 1798) 'The Bath' (Heller, 1827) and 'The Desperate Man' (von Retberg, 1871). Panofsky interpreted the print in terms of Dürer's continuing interest in the types of melancholy to affect the human condition which so preoccupied medical men of the day; with for example, the man in the centre, who apparently tears his hair, signifying choleric melancholy, the sleeping figure representing phlegmatic melancholy and the pleasure-seeking satyr representing sanguine melancholy.
This print is generally regarded as the earliest of Dürer's six etchings and since he was one of the first practitioners of the technique, which was probably developed by Daniel Hopfer (c.1470 - 1536) in Augsburg for the commercial production of ornament prints, this may have been an experimental plate in which Dürer amalgamated various images. The man on the left is based on Dürer's pen and ink profile portrait of his brother Endres of 1514 (Vienna, Albertina; Strauss 1514/31) with the addition of a beard, and the sleeping woman is reminiscent of a drawing of a woman asleep next to a drinking fountain of the same year (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; Strauss 1514/36)'

Bibliographic references;

Meder 1932 / Dürer Katalog (95)
Bartsch / Le Peintre graveur (VII.84.70)
Dodgson 1926 / Albrecht Dürer (80)
Schoch 2001-04 / Albrecht Dürer, das druckgraphische Werk. 3 vols I Intaglio, II Woodcuts, III Book illustrations (I.79)

(British Museum)

This later heliogravure impression was made in 1914 in Munich.