BUY THE BOOK! CRIMES IN
THE ART: THE SECRET CIPHER OF ALBRECHT DÜRER
Dürer’s Melencolia I is the most debated image in
all of art history, one of his most magical, and one of his most heavily
encoded.
One of the fascinating symbols in Melencolia is what is
known as the Magic Square, which is found in the upper right hand corner of the
print on the wall, under the bell, above the winged woman.
WHAT IS A MAGIC SQUARE?
Numeric Magic Squares may be divided into two
categories:
- “Odd” Magic Squares, which means that there is an odd number of cells on each side of the Magic Square.
- “Even” Magic Squares, which means that there is an even number of cells on each side of the Magic Square. “Even” Magic Squares may be further divided into two sub-categories:
- “singly even” Magic Squares, which means that the number of cells on each side of the Magic Square is evenly divisible by two, but not by four (e.g. 6 x 6 and 10 x 10 Magic Squares)
- “doubly even” Magic Squares, which means that the number of cells on each side of the Magic Square is evenly divisible by both two and 4 (e.g. 4 x 4 and 8 x 8 magic squares)
Dürer’s magic square is a doubly even 4 x 4
square whose magic constant is 34. Dürer’s magic square has the additional
property that the sums in any of the four quadrants, as well as the sum of the
middle four numbers, are all 34 (Hunter and Madachy 1975, p. 24). It is
thus a gnomon magic square.
In addition, any pair of numbers symmetrically placed about the center of the
square sums to 17, a property making the square even more magical.
Here’s a YouTube video link that explains it in
more detail. Unfortunately the math teacher did not know the difference
between a painting and an engraving.
DAN BROWN’S LOST SYMBOL
Anyone who has ever commented on Dürer’s magic
square seems to believe that it’s inclusion in this composition has something
to do with alchemy or Freemasonry or some occult phenomenon.
Dan Brown’s inclusion of Dürer’s magic square as
part of the symbol clues in his book the Lost Symbol was fiction. Nothing could
be further from the truth. The Lost Symbol was a great FICTION story but
it has done nothing but confuse the real coding that is held in Dürer’s Magic
Square.
MEDIEVAL SUDOKU
Do you like to play Sudoku or do you know someone
who does? Of course you do! People in the Renaissance loved to play
games as much as everyone does today.
Magic squares were common in medieval times and
everyone loved them and many people owned them. They were sold at market
fairs all over Europe, and their availability was common. They were
considered amulets against disease, which was rampant in Europe. They were
manufactured in tin for the masses and in silver or gold for the wealthy.
But the most important point is to understand
that anyone who saw the magic square in this print in Dürer’s lifetime would
not have connected the symbol with alchemy or something arcane. They were
games and amulets and fun. Pilgrims often bought them, they were
commonplace and would attract buyers.
And anyone who saw the magic square in the print
Melencolia was not going to suspect that Dürer was using steganography,
the art and science of hiding messages in plain sight, to get a message across
about what Melencolia is really about.
Dürer did do something unusual with the numbers
in this magic square, which gives us a hint as to the message he was
giving. He rearranged the numbers from their usual order. Agrippa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Vipsanius_Agrippa)
wrote much about magic squares in his Occulta Philosophia and claimed that the
Tabula Jovis (http://www.scribd.com/doc/65262304/Adam-McLean-Dr-Rudds-Treatisse-on-Angel-Magick)
had magic properties. The Tabula Jovis configuration of the 4 x 4 square
was as follows:
4 14 15 1
9 7 6 12
5 11 10 8
16 2 3 13
We can see that Durer changed his configuration
dramatically from Agrippa’s.
WHAT CAN BE SEEN HAS BEEN IGNORED
The first thing that we must know about the
Melencolia magic square is that Dürer originally created this composition
with the “9” in the third row backwards. We know this because there is
one existing copy of the backwards “9” magic square in the British Museum.
Based upon how many copies of Melencolia are
still existent, we can assume that Dürer changed his mind very quickly
about how obvious the clue of the backwards “9” really was, and changed the
copper plate to represent a forward “9.”
People don’t often understand that artists made
mistakes and were very competent at fixing errors in woodblocks or copperplates
in the Renaissance. No one was perfect. In woodblocks, the mistake
would be cut out and a plug would be inserted and the correction made. In
engraved copperplates, the area would be buffed out and re-engraved.
So it wasn’t that big of a deal for Dürer to
change the backwards “9” to a forwards “9.”
OOPS!
But no one pays attention to the correction of
the “5” above the “9.” Dürer had originally place the number “6”
into that block and historians seem to think that OOPS, he made a
mistake. Not likely. Dürer was also known as a famous
scientist and mathematician during his lifetime, so the likelihood that this
master of math and master of engraving just happened to OOPS! Put a “6” where a
“5” should go is somewhat ludicrous.
What IF Dürer was actually leaving us a
message with this “mistake?” What if he meant to have the image of the
“6” visible to all when he corrected it to a “5?” What IF THAT WAS THE
MESSAGE: whatever the #6 represented was somehow hidden? If this is
true, we don’t truly have a magic square, because another number has been
entered into the equation.
But it’s a great way to hide a message! Something
that most people in his lifetime would just ignore, being delighted with
“magic” of the numbered square adding up to 34.
WHERE TO START?
And what no one has ever contemplated is
this: HOW is this magic square to be read? Do we start at the upper
left hand corner? The lower left? The upper right? Or the
lower right? If Durer is passing a message steganographically, e.g.
hidden in plain sight, the people who are supposed to get the message have to
know how to read the code.
The reading of the magic square starts at the
lower left hand corner. What does that tell you?
For more details please go through http://www.albrechtdurerblog.com/.
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