Melancholy

The analysis of this work must be placed in the context of the Protestant Reformation and the friendship between Cranach and Martin Luther. For Luther, melancholy was the "devil's bath." Unlike Dürer's humanist vision, which saw melancholy as the torment of creative genius, Cranach paints it here as a spiritual vice, a form of acedia or indolence that paralyzes the soul and exposes it to evil influences. The winged female figure, seated and pensive, is not a muse but an incarnation of this dangerous lethargy, turned away from her sacred duties. The myth of the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic) inherited from Antiquity is subverted here. According to the theory of humors, the melancholic is dominated by black bile and influenced by the planet Saturn. Cranach uses this iconography to warn the viewer: the empty and contemplative mind of the young woman is fertile ground for demons. The children playing at her feet, clumsily trying to pass a dog through a hoop, reinforce the idea of vain and absurd activity, a symbol of the futility of human efforts without the guidance of faith. The satirical aspect is fundamental. Cranach treats the subject with a certain cruel irony, characteristic of Northern Mannerism. The woman's brilliant red dress contrasts violently with her dull expression, creating visual unease. This contrast emphasizes the gap between the appearance of vitality and inner spiritual death. The landscape in the background, though typical of Saxon valleys, seems disconnected from the action, reinforcing the sense of psychological isolation of the central figure. The work explores the conflict between knowledge and faith. The measuring tools scattered in other versions of this theme are absent here or replaced by domestic and playful elements. This suggests that human reason is powerless against the distress of the soul. For Cranach, the solution to melancholy is not intellectual work or art, but trust in divine grace, the only force capable of dispelling the demonic clouds gathering above the protagonist's head. In short, this painting is a visual manifesto of Lutheran theology on human psychology. It marks a break with the idealism of the Italian Renaissance to embrace a moralizing realism. The viewer is invited not to admire melancholy, but to fear it as a pathology of the will that separates man from God.