Copyright Dr. Margaret Sullivan, Oct 5, 2013, All rights reserved

The Jewish “Azazel” was a goat that bore the sins of all the Jews on the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Azazel (Aramaic: רמשנאל, Hebrew: עזאזל, Aze’ezel Arabic: عزازل Azazil) is an enigmatic name from the Hebrew scriptures and Apocrypha, where the name is used interchangeably with Rameel and Gadriel. The word’s first appearance is in Leviticus 16, where a goat is designated “FOR Azazel” and outcast in the desert as part of Yom Kippur. After Satan, for whom he was in some degree a preparation, Azazel enjoys the distinction of being the most mysterious extrahuman character in Jewish sacred literature. Unlike other Hebrew proper names, the name itself is obscure. Leviticus 16:8-10: “and Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Aza’zel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering; ¹but the goat on which the lot fell for Aza’zel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Aza’zel.”

The goat was pushed off a cliff during ancient times and is the source of the concept of “scapegoat.” It appears that Dürer, as a hidden Jew, was identifying himself with the satyr, indicating that he was scapegoat of some sort, albeit a powerful one, and that the print references a family feud between the Dürers and his in-laws, the Frey/Rummels.

The headdress on the standing, central woman is also found in Dürer’s 1497 engraving titled by scholars as the Four Naked Women or Four Witches.  It appears that this headdress signifies Dürer’s mother, Barbara.

The rooster helmet worn by the naked man is also found in Dürer’s woodcut called The Beast with Two Horns, part of The Apocalypse.  A rooster was used in the arms of the Nuremberg Patrician Rummel family.  Dürer’s wife, Agnes Frey, was descended from a Rummel family member, and Dürer’s own family had already been intermarried with the Rummels before his marriage to Agnes.

The final thing to note before we start explaining what this print really means is that Dürer’s implementation of the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins among his prints was done using the “opposite unlikely” Sin representation.  This print has two naked people, a satyr who was usually used to represent sexual lust, a woman battling and another naked child.  So it was assumed that this picture is about LUST.  Dürer uses the same technique with the other Deadly sin representations.  No one would suspect that the Sea Monster is the Deadly Sin of Wrath-the woman looks so calm; no one would think that the Prodigal Son actually represents the deadly Sin of Avarice-it looks like it would represent gluttony.  No one would suspect that Adam and Eve is actually the Deadly Sin of Lust-THE FALL OF MAN, as Adam and Eve is often wrongly called, is not based on sexual lust, it’s based on the snake convincing Eve to disobey God. The truth about this print is that this print is Dürer’s representation of the Deadly Sin of Pride.

And so we know immediately that the central figure, Barbara is actually trying to hit a figure that represents the Freys/Rummels-Dürer’s in-laws by marriage-his connection to the German Nuremberg Patricians. The Frey/Rummel man is defending himself from a female Dürer, who represents Barbara Dürerin, Mom.  The Satyr is a Jewish Satyr and the Satyr is the most powerful person in the picture because it holds the jawbone of the ass-the power symbol, which is Dürer. And that this is Dürer’s representation of the Deadly Sin of Pride. Albrecht is very proud of something in this composition.

The fact that Dürer actually uses the Azazel satyr in this print is an indication of Dürer’s purposeful intent to deflect his buyers from its true interpretation.  The knowledge of a Jewish Azazel is not one that would be commonly known in the Holy Roman Empire by Christians-it’s a very obscure Jewish symbol. It would be doubtful that any art historian starting in 1568 with Vasari, the first Dürer art historian, would have recognized such an obscure symbol after the Jews had basically migrated out of Western Europe.

So at this point we have Barbara Dürer(in) battling the Frey/Rummels, Albrecht Dürer representing himself as a Jewish sacrifice BUT the most powerful of all, and Agnes his wife is looking for protection from her husband who seems quite unaffected by her fear.

Which leaves us with the identification of the child running away from the scene on the right hand side.  We know this child is a tracing in reverse from Dürer’s Death of Orpheus but why is it necessary for Dürer to include a child in the scene at all?  Whose child is this?

The child is represented at an age of probably 2-3 years old and we can definitely see that it’s a male child.  The identification of this child is made by the landscape that is on the right hand side of the picture.

What child would be associated with a Dürer, with Italy, and who is not “really” connected officially with a Dürer?  There is only one-Albrecht Dürer’s 1^st bastard, Anthoni (we learn his actual name much later in Melencholia Symbol I) represented in the Nursing Mother erroneously called Penance of St. John Chrysostom-who would have been roughly 2-3 years of age.  He’s a bastard, he’s not legally connected to the Dürer family and he’s placed on the LEFT SIDE of the figures in the composition-the heraldic sinister side which was used to represent bastard children. So now we have 4 Dürer figures in this print.

Let’s put it all together. Dante’s definition of Pride (Superbia) is as follows: Pride (Superbia-vanity) – an excessive love of self or holding self out of proper position toward God or fellows. Dante’s definition was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor,” And what is this story composition about?

The excessive hatred and contempt for the Frey/Rummels and the representation that Dürer, the Azazel, was the one who sacrificed himself for the good of his family.  Dürer made a giant personal sacrifice in making The Apocalypse. Four Jewish Dürers are represented (although technically if the child’s mother had not been Jewish, the bastard would not be considered Jewish either; it is likely that the mother was not Jewish since she was a Patrician’s daughter in Italy but we can’t be sure until the coat of arms of the Nursing Mother are decoded in that print telling us exactly who she is).

Dürer’s mother Barbara, the naked man with the rooster helmet, which are the coat of arms of a famous ancestor of Dürer’s in-laws appear to be battling about the fact that Agnes had yet to bear an heir after 5 years of marriage and her chances of doing so were disappearing as she aged. Dürer is proud that he could at least father a child and basically shoves it in the faces of all the Frey/Rummels. And just to make the humiliation even worse, he indicates his bisexuality to embarrass all of them.

However, the worse thing is that the bastard son is not Jewish without a Jewish mother, so even from an inheritance standpoint, the bastard can’t really count for inheritance purposes to the Dürers.  There’s a chance that the Freys were crypto Jews also, so it makes the entire situation worse for both families.

Dürer would have his revenge for making them marry Agnes.

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