Necklace from Albrecht Dürer's "Magic Square" collection
Necklace from the "Magic Square" collection, inspired by "Melancholia I". Albrecht Durer. made of bronze, plated with black ruthenium.
Dimensions: 23x23 mm
Sold complete with a 50-cm chain with an adjustable length of 4.5 cm.
"Magic Square" collection, designed for RD-Bijoux, Paris. The front of the necklace depicts the Magic Square, located in the upper right corner of "Melancholy I." The numbers 15 and 14 visible in the middle of the bottom row give us the date of the engraving's creation, 1514. The meaning of this square - as well as the meaning of many other elements contained in the engraving and the engraving itself - has long been a subject of debate among specialists. All the more so because this magic square has unusual properties: the magic sum in Dürer's square is 34 - each row, column, diagonal, 4 squares in the middle, 4 squares in the corner... and many other combinations give a total of 34. Specialists have counted 86 different combinations of the 4 numbers in Dürer's magic square, which give 34!
On the back of the necklace is Dürer's famous monogram, designed by him in 1495. Dürer was one of the first artists to sign his works - especially drawings - and one of the first to try to protect his intellectual rights (this was not easy, given that his works were extremely popular in many countries). In 1505, the artist even traveled to Italy, where, as a result of his intervention, the Venetian Senate enacted a law that banned the use of Dürer's monogram to anyone but the artist himself.
