Giraffe

says "stay home, stay safe.

Full disclosure - symptoms update: I have a paper cut on the tip of the forefinger of my right hand, which is 3mm long. But please, I don't need your sympathy.

I know the music of Tracey Thorn quite well but, before today, had never heard her 2007 album Out Of The Woods, on which my favourite track is Get Around To It.

Today's picture is Albrecht Dürer's Melecholia I (1514) Until the late 15th century, paintings were very expensive to buy and copies were rare.  Therefore, they were mostly the possessions of churches and other rich people.  However, the development of engraving and printing opened-up opportunities for bulk production, making the purchase of works of art accessible to the middle classes. Dürer was an early exponent of that.

Also, works of art to be shown in churches and other public buildings were still expected to adhere to strict conventions and portraits had to please those commissioning them. Graphic works however, likely to be hung in private, could be produced on the artist's own terms and thus be less hidebound by convention.

Melencholia (sic) I is one such work and is full of ambiguities and mysteries. Dürer wrote, warning his students against too much practice, that "melancholy" might "get out of hand."  His image of a figure with her head in her hands is associated not only with melancholy but also with "acedia," an ailment said to be a torpor suffered by medieval monks unable to "raise one's soul to God." It was long seen as one of the deadly sins.

However, the concept was also starting to be understood as akin to depression today.  At the time he made this work Dürer's mother had just died and he was living in a joyless, childless marriage. Aristotle wrote that melancholy could inspire great achievements: "All truly outstanding men (sic) whether they have distinguished themselves in statecraft, literature or the fine arts, are melancholics." This positive view of melancholy was just being rediscovered in the early 16th century.

If that is all too gloomy in present circumstances, this work of art might cheer you up.