Melancholy

Cranach responded to Dürer's engraving of 'Melancholy' from 1514, possibly the 'most spoken about and commented work in the history of art', with a series of paintings, all of them created between 1528 and 1533. The fact that these works were created within a few years of each other but a certain time after the highly complex image by the artist from Nuremburg raises the question of whether there was an external cause. This may be related to Luther's view on Melancholy and its negative consequences. Based on these Cranach designed his antithesis/counter-images to Dürer's new, now positively tainted interpretation of the melancholic disposition.

Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France