An audience of more than 50 Northwestern faculty members, students and Evanston area art enthusiasts gathered at the Block Museum of Art to hear Peter Parshall, curator of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art in Washington speak about a 500-year-old engraving Thursday evening.

The lecture, titled “The Knowledge of Nobody,” sought to examine the inspiration behind 16th century German artist Albrecht Dürer’s best-known engraving, “Melencolia I,” and the medium in general. The museum’s main exhibit, “The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver,” showcases a collection of European engraving prints made from 1480-1650.

“First of all, we’re here to celebrate an exhibition,” said Parshall, who has published several books about European printmaking. “Engraving has been long understood as its own medium.”

“Melencolia I” depicts the Angel of Melancholy sitting among sundry objects such as nails, a knife and a sleeping dog. Several interpretations of the piece are heavily debated throughout the art world. Though “Melencolia I” is not on exhibit at the Block Museum, a number of Dürer’s other prints are, including “The Large Horse” and “The Four Witches.”

Parshall also discussed the impact of engraving and printmaking on the Renaissance and Baroque periods of European art. He showed the audience prints from The Brilliant Line exhibit: Dürer’s “Virgin and Child with a Monkey” and Martin Schongauer’s “Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons,” as well as woodcuts not on display at the Block Museum.

“Melencolia I” is one of the most written about pieces of art in history, as well as one of the most vague, said Maureen Warren, an art history graduate student and curator of the Block Museum’s other exhibition, “Engraving the Ephemeral.”

“It’s the most famous and also the most ambiguous work done by Albrecht Dürer,” Warren said. “It’s hard to tackle something that so many people have talked about. To propose a new idea about ‘Melencolia’ is daunting, and (Parshall)’s given us something with real traction, something to mull over.”

Parshall said “Melencolia I” was Dürer’s way of exploring the concept of imagination.

“This is Dürer’s meditation on the role of invention in art,” Parshall said. “Dürer persistently refused to grant the idea of making something entirely new, instead imagining the mind as a storehouse of memories from which people drew.”

Parshall also discussed the possibility that Dürer used the piece to grapple with the concept of identity and self.

“‘Melencolia’ is, at essence, about identity,” he said. “It may be an allegory to the archetypal figure ‘Nemo,’ or ‘no man,’ essentially meaning, ‘no one.'”

Warren said she found Parshall’s idea of “Melencolia” as a depiction of “nobody” most interesting.

“It has been widely talked about as a self-portrait,” she said. “It’s very interesting to hear affirming and disaffirming thoughts about that.”

Parshall’s lecture is the last event in conjunction with The Brilliant Line exhibit, which will stay in the Block Museum’s main gallery until June 20. [email protected]