Contemporary readers may think it a matter of superstition that certain kinds of images and objects through the medieval and Renaissance periods were considered to have transformative powers on their viewers—to have the capacity to convert or redeem, to leave an imprint on the mind or body, to protect lives in times of war and plague, to heal the sick and wounded, and to soothe the soul. In his foundational Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, Hans Belting famously traced a decline in the miraculous and magical powers of cult images and the ascension of works of art as things valued for the artist’s idea. Mitchell Merback’s new book, Perfection’s Therapy, is an examination of the image—one image, in particular: Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I (1514)—at a historical moment when these two paradigms of images flourished and even reinforced each other, where images were agents intervening efficaciously in the beholder’s life and were at the same time desired as aesthetic objects of artistic mastery. Merback makes a learned case for understanding Dürer’s print, one of his three “master engravings” (Meisterstiche), as a healing agent and “consoling image” (Trostblatt) that operates by stimulating the beholder to deep speculative thought in an exercise that rebalances the mind. In short, the engraving actively works not only as a diagnosis for the psychomedical condition of melancholy—that is, “melancholy is like this”1—but also as an image that conveys what it feels like emotionally and serves up a remedy. With that, Dürer stakes a larger claim for himself as artist-medicus. Always a sensitive thinker, Merback reminds us that the era’s idealism about human perfectibility, virtuous striving, and intellectual and global “discoveries” coexisted alongside a cultural landscape of “Renaissance misery” (p. 14), the dark underbelly of the German Renaissance, where apocalyptic fervor, fears of devilish visions, violent warfare, disease, Jewish pogroms, and the Ottoman Turkish “menace” at the eastern edge of the Holy Roman Empire occupied much mental space. As two sides of the same coin, perfection and melancholy were “constant companions,” with sixteenth-century melancholy seen as a kind of “spiritual sadness” resulting from “frustrated exertion in the pursuit of . . . technical perfection, moral perfection, aesthetic perfection” (p. 14). As Merback points out, the only time Dürer mentioned melancholy in his surviving writings—aside from the inscription “Melencolia I” on the bat wings of the engraving itself—was in the unpublished Nourishment for Young Painters (Ein Speis der Malerknaben), from the same time period. In it Dürer cautions the apprentice that in “exerting himself too much” he risked “falling under the hand of melancholy” (pp. 15,

中文翻译：

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完美疗法：米歇尔·B·梅尔贝克（Mitchell B. Merback）撰写的阿尔布雷希特·丢勒（AlbrechtDürer）的《 Melencolia I》随笔

当代读者可能会认为，中世纪和文艺复兴时期的某些图像和物体被视为对观众具有变革力量，即具有转换或赎回的能力，在思想或身体上留下印记，这是一种迷信，以保护在战乱和瘟疫中的生命，治愈患病和受伤的人，并抚慰心灵。汉斯·贝尔廷（Hans Belting）在他的《基本的形象和存在：艺术时代之前的图像史》中，著名地描绘了邪教图像的神奇和神奇力量的衰落以及艺术品的提升，而艺术品的升值是对艺术家思想的重视。米切尔·梅尔贝克（Mitchell Merback）的新书《完美疗法》（Perfection's Therapy）是对图像的检查，尤其是一个图像：阿尔布雷希特·丢勒（AlbrechtDürer）的版画《 Melencolia I》（1514年）是在历史性的时刻，当这两种图像范式蓬勃发展甚至相互补充时，图像是旁观者生活中的有效干预者，同时又被要求作为艺术精湛的美学对象。Merback为了解Dürer的版画（他的三个“大师级雕刻”（Meisterstiche）之一）作为治疗剂和“安慰性形象”（Trostblatt）提供了有学识的案例，该作品通过激发旁观者沉思的投机思维来进行，从而重新平衡了头脑。简而言之，雕刻不仅可以有效地诊断忧郁症的心理状况（即“忧郁症就是这样” 1），而且还可以作为传达情感感觉并起到补救作用的图像。接着就，随即，杜勒（Dürer）对自己作为艺术家医学有更大的主张。默巴克一直是一个敏感的思想家，他提醒我们，这个时代关于人类的完美，有德的奋斗以及智力和全球性“发现”的理想主义与“文艺复兴时期的苦难”（第14页），德国文艺复兴时期的黑暗弱点，世界末日的狂热，对恶魔般的异象，暴力战争，疾病，犹太大屠杀以及在神圣罗马帝国东部边缘的奥斯曼土耳其“威胁”的恐惧占据了很大的精神空间。作为同一枚硬币的两个侧面，完美与忧郁是“不变的伴侣”，而十六世纪的忧郁被视为一种“精神上的悲伤”，源于“追求追求的沮丧努力”。。。技术上的完美，道德上的完美，美学上的完美”（第14页）。正如Merback所指出的，除了版画本身的蝙蝠翅膀上的题为“ Melencolia I”的字样之外，丢勒在幸存的作品中唯一一次提到忧郁症的时间是同一时期未出版的《年轻画家的营养》（Ein Speis der Malerknaben）。杜勒在书中警告学徒，“过分劳累”他冒着“陷入忧郁之手”的危险（第15页，第15页）。