Melancholy
Lucas Cranach the Elder
1532
With only a stick to help them, three nude boy children attempt to play a game, the object of which is to pass a large ball through a hoop.
A winged woman, lost in thought, splits a stick, seemingly in the process of making another hoop.
Through reference to a similar figure in an Albrecht Dürer print, the seated female has been read as a personification of Melancholy, one of the four temperaments. Renaissance scholars believed that the world was built from a system of correspondences. Melancholy was associated with Saturn, winter, the dragon, lead, and earth.
The other three were the choleric, the sanguine, and the phlegmatic temperaments. Each of these corresponded to other elements, metals, animals, and seasons.
SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen · Image: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Public domain · Text: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark (text: Eva de la Fuente Pedersen) (adapted), CC0