The Melancholic

Melancholy was, for the Renaissance, the temperament of the thinker and the artist — the inward, Saturnine cast of mind that turns away from the world to brood. Dürer's famous engraving Melencolia I made it a permanent image: a winged figure surrounded by the tools of knowledge, unable to act, sunk in thought. As a mood in painting it pervades far more than its allegories. It is the grey weather of a Friedrich, the empty chair of a Van Gogh, the averted face and the unanswered letter. The melancholic picture is quiet, often dim, and almost always solitary; it values dusk over noon, autumn over summer, the back of a head over a smiling face. Watch for the figure who looks away, or looks at nothing — the gaze turned inward is melancholy's signature. The mood is not the same as sadness. It is closer to a pensive, almost pleasurable sorrow, the feeling of being alone with one's own thoughts, and painting has always been one of its natural homes.

Curatorial note by Alexander Knigge, Editor, Artifact World Gallery