resents a woman,
goddess, or devil, fully clad, and bearing keys and a purse at her
girdle, her head wreathed with spleenwort, and great wings springing
from her shoulders; the while she gazes intently, and with unutterable
melancholy, into a magic crystal globe before her. On one side a
drowsy Cupid is trying to write, near a ladder which rises from unseen
depths to unimagined heights; and on the wall are the balanced scales,
the astrological table of figures, the hour-glass running low, and the
silent bell. The floor is strewn with scientific and necromantic
instruments, and a great cube of strange form lies beyond. The
prevailing gloom of the picture is but dimly lighted by a lurid and
solitary comet, whose rays shimmer along an expanse of black ocean,
and are reflected from a firm-arched rainbow above. Across the
alternately black and blazing sky flies a horrible bat-winged
creature, bearing a scroll inscribed with the word MELENCOLIA, before
the blank negations symbolized by the disastrous portent of the comet
and the joyous sign of the rainbow.

Under the guise of this mystic black-browed woman the artist probably
typifies the profound sorrow of the human soul, checked by Divine
limitations from attaining a full knowledge of the secrets of nature
or the wisdom of heaven. The discarded implements of natural and
occult science are alike useless; and nought remains but gloomy
introspection and a consciousness of insufficiency.

Duerer describes his mother's death with mournful tenderness and
touching simplicity, saying: "Now you must know that in the year 1513,
on a Tuesday in Cross-week, my poor unhappy mother, whom I had taken
under my charge two years after my father's death, because she was
then quite poor, and who had lived with me for nine years, was taken
deathly sick on one morning early, so that we had to break open her
room; for we knew not, as she could not get up, what to do. So we bore
her down into a room, and she had the sacraments in both kinds
administered to her, for every one thought that she was going to die,
for she had been failing in health ever since my father's death. And
her custom was to go often to church; and she always punished me when
I did not act rightly, and she always took great care to keep me and
my brothers from sin; and, whether I went in or out, her constant word
was, 'In the name of Christ;' and with great diligence she constantly
gave us holy exhortations, and had great car