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This article addresses the genesis and reception of three engravings representing peasants made by Albrecht Dürer between the years 1514 and 1519. These images have been interpreted as social commentary or low-brow farce; I argue their importance is art theoretical. In my view, they are the result of Dürer's 1505-6 visit to Venice, where Italian artists derided his ability to work in a classical idiom. In response, I argue, Dürer developed a method of imitation that I call "inverse citation," which veils a famous antique model in the guise of a boorish peasant. Following Luther's rebellion against the Church, northern artists took up this technique with more polemical aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featuring the image of an athlete tugging at a rooted sapling, Impossible is the most enigmatic of the many small-scale engravings produced by Hans Sebald Beham. Juxtaposed with the adage ''Nobody should dare great things that are impossible for him to do,'' the image not only challenges the astute viewer to a game of wits: the resulting paradox also unleashes a cascade of ethical questions concerning the boundedness of the will, Christian freedom, human perfectibility, and the paradoxical conditions of self-knowledge. These issues came to the fore in the sixteenth-century debate over free will, which pitted humanists, magisterial, and radical reformers against one another. Beham's documented experience as a religious and political dissident during the 1520s raises the possibility that the print, made later in life, embeds still another allegorical layer: the conflicted situation of the artist in an era of reform and iconoclasm, Renaissance and revolution, hope and disillusionment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the interpretation of an engraving by Renaissance German artist Albrecht Dürer. Interpretive theories by various art historians such as Peter-Klaus Schuster are discussed, but the author notes that room remains for further studies of the meanings in Dürer's work "Melancolia I." An examination is given of the thematic element of justice in the engraving. References are made to Greek and Roman mythology, works by medieval scholar Boethius, and the story of Biblical figure Noah and the Flood.