The Persistence of Melancholia in Arts and Culture

Andrea Bubenik, Andrea Bubenik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429887765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Renaissance Art

This book explores the history and continuing relevance of melancholia as an amorphous but richly suggestive theme in literature, music, and visual culture, as well as philosophy and the history of ideas. Inspired by Albrecht Dürer's engraving Melencolia I (1514)—the first visual representation of artistic melancholy—this volume brings together contributions by scholars from a variety of disciplines. Topics include: Melencolia I and its reception; how melancholia inhabits landscapes, soundscapes, figures and objects; melancholia in medical and psychological contexts; how melancholia both enables and troubles artistic creation; and Sigmund Freud's essay "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917).

1
Hearts on Fire

Renaissance Portraiture and Erotic Melancholy

Laurinda S. Dixon

Two English miniature portraits from the Elizabethan era (Plates 2 and 3) show their subjects in a way never before seen in art. Attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) and/or Isaac Oliver (1560–1617), both paintings depict attractive young men gazing intensely outward, locking eyes with the viewer.¹ The unique feature of both these portraits is the curtain of shimmering flames that pervades their backgrounds, obscuring all sense of place and time. The Hilliard miniature shows a pale young man with dark, unkempt hair, wearing a fashionable earring in the shape of a fleur de lis. In a remarkable display of casual disorder, he has cast off his doublet, appearing only in a lace shift, unbuttoned nearly to the waist. Gazing outward, he absent-mindedly toys with a locket at the end of a long chain around his neck. Oliver’s painting is similar, though slightly smaller. This young man has the same dark, soulful eyes, and his beard and hairstyle are also similar. We do not know the identities of these men, but they are so close in appearance that they could be taken for brothers, or perhaps even the same person. Oliver’s youth also wears an earring, but instead of an undershirt, he is dressed in a mantle, draped in the classical manner over his shoulders. In the space above him is a Latin motto, “Alget qui non arter” (He grows cold who does not burn). These carefully chosen works suggest that without inner fire, there is no life—or love, for that matter. Whether they represent the same, or different men, both images portray fashionable courtiers, exemplars of high social status and taste. That they are in the grip of “burning passion,” seems to be obvious to modern viewers. But what did that phrase imply as the sixteenth century yielded to the seventeenth? And what purpose did these unconventional portraits serve?

English miniature portraits like these are compelling in their immediacy and expressiveness. When not representing a sovereign, such as Elizabeth I, they depict handsome, aristocratic youths and pretty, well-born ladies, often accompanied by personal mottos and declarations of undying loyalty and eternal love.² Such portraits convey a disquieting combination of sullenness and agitation, subtle sadness and ardent desire. In their calculated air of exquisite ennui, they communicate both privilege and passion. Painted in precise detail, sometimes on the backs of playing cards, miniature portraits were originally hidden behind elaborate hinged covers and worn as lockets around the neck (as in the Hilliard portrait) or as broaches pinned to the clothing. The faces in these portraits peer intently from their frames, locking eyes with the beholder as if to recruit us to some serious purpose. They capture the fleeting quality of mood, blurring the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity. These cherished likenesses functioned as reminders of loved ones who, though absent, were always available and close.

Historians explain the striking immediacy of English miniature portraits as reflecting the “psychology” of their subjects, and interpret them as delicate and wistful evocations of romantic love. Today, we glorify the state of being “in love” as a sublime human experience, and a large and burgeoning scholarly literature in many fields addresses the theme of the sombre, yet sublime lover. However, when applied to portraiture, this approach is anachronistic and, as we shall see, ultimately reductive. The discipline of “psychology”—the modern science of the mind—was unknown before the Freudian revolution of the nineteenth century.³ The early modern era perceived love quite differently than do we, as a species of melancholia.⁴ As such, love was perceived as a sickness in need of a cure. In their own time, these portrait miniatures served as concrete representations of an ancient paradigm involving the eyes, heart, and brain, which worked in tandem to produce a physical response to the passion and sickness of love melancholy.⁵

By the sixteenth century, the definition of melancholia as a medical condition had persisted for two millennia.⁶ Also called amor hereos or erotomania, the condition depended on the ancient paradigm of humoral theory, which prevailed until the Enlightenment.⁷ Within this worldview, all people and things were comprised of four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—which, in turn, were characterized by four qualities—cold, warm, hot, and wet. Four humors—black bile, blood, yellow bile, and phlegm—represented the elements and qualities within the body. The elements, qualities, and humours together formed yet another quartet, the four temperaments, or human types. Warmth and wetness defined the sanguine temperament, embodied in blood and air, whereas the choleric type, carried in yellow bile, was dominated by dry, hot fire. Phlegmatics were cold, wet, and watery, distinguished by overabundant phlegm. Melancholics were filled with black bile and, as a result, were dry, cold, and earthy. Individuals took on the character of their dominant temperament both in physical appearance and in the makeup of the soul, which we might call their “personality.” Melancholics tended to be withdrawn and depressed, reflecting the inertia of earth. Generally, the condition could afflict a person in two ways. The temperament could occur naturally, as the result of planetary and zodiacal dominance (born under Saturn), heredity (having melancholic parents), or race (born a Moor, Jew, or Negro), or “accidentally,” as the result of unforeseen events and passions, which afflict all human beings throughout their lives. Health was defined as the perfect harmony of humours within the body, and sickness was the result of humoral imbalance. Any diseased or injured part of the body could affect the mind by sympathy and, vice versa, any intense emotion or mental effort could induce disease. Love melancholia was the result of humoral fires within the body, which left cold, black bile in their wake.⁸

The stylish young men and women in miniature portraits express a sort of delicious misery, as if reveling in their melancholia. They are a study in contrasts—wretched yet ecstatic; heated by the internal flames of passion, yet pale and cold to the touch; morose yet appealing. The disease of love was contradictory, embodying the opposing qualities of heat and cold in a single condition. Love’s victims endured both the tumultuous heat of desire and its inevitable cold, sooty aftermath. The association of love, or “heroic,” melancholy with nobility was omnipresent in the chivalric tradition, which exalted the concept of romantic fervour. In reality, however, the notion of privilege grew from a mistranslation of the Greek word “eros” (erotic love) into “hereos” (noble).⁹ Thus, the ideas of eroticism and knightly virtue became conjoined through misuse into a single definition. The chivalric pretentions of the Tudor court embraced both the delights and vicissitudes of love melancholy, inherited from earlier centuries.¹⁰ Fashionable lovers, men of sensitivity and depth, displayed their humoral imbalance as a badge of privilege. By the seventeenth century, love melancholy was fully accepted as a disease of fashion, denoting high social status, intelligence, and sensitivity.¹¹ Eventually melancholia became so strongly associated with the British Isles and its aristocracy, that the disorder became known as “the English disease.”¹²

Vivid accounts of the irrational behaviour of melancholic lovers—fear, trembling, insomnia, swooning, listlessness—are ubiquitous in early modern culture.¹³ Familiar to all is Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Hamlet, who suffers as a result of his ill-fated love for Ophelia. The mournful laments of John Dowland (1563–1626), who exploited his very name as a pun on the words semper dolas (always grieving), are among the most moving songs in the history of music.¹⁴ The symptoms of the disease of love were instigated by intense inner heat, which afflicted not only lovers, but also scholars and holy men. These three types—lovers, scholars, and hermits—suffered the burned out aftermath of humoral conflagrations.¹⁵ By the time of Hilliard and Oliver, love melancholy claimed the attention of several theorists, most notably Jacques Ferrand, André du Laurens, and Robert Burton.¹⁶ These authors penned vernacular monographs, which were widely read by the literate public. Concurrently, love melancholy came under increased scrutiny in academic circles, and was the subject of many doctoral dissertations in major European medical schools.¹⁷ But the pathology of melancholia was also part of common wisdom. Just as we in the twenty-first century have absorbed the nouns “complex” and “the unconscious” into our vocabulary, not all of us have actually read the source of these ideas. Psychological terminology is part of our contemporary wisdom, as was the language of the temperaments before the Enlightenment. Early modern viewers need not have read a scholarly treatise to recognize the malady suffered by the love-struck gallants in Hilliard’s and Oliver’s portraits.

The frontispiece of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (Figure 1.1), which endured basically unchanged throughout its many editions, visually displays the most important melancholic types. The page is divided into four horizontal sections, each subdivided into three parts. At the top centre of the page, beneath the astrological symbol for the planet Saturn, sits Democritus, the venerable Greek thinker who maintained that the best response to a difficult world is to laugh at its follies. He personifies the pen name of the author Robert Burton, “Democritus Junior,” whose portrait appears framed beneath the centre title. The philosopher sits in deep thought, quill in hand, beneath a tree on a grassy hillock above a walled formal garden. The landscape views to either side of him are populated with birds and animals traditionally associated with Saturn and melancholy. At his right (our left) are birds signifying its attendant vices, jealousy, and venery. The text identifies them as a kingfisher, swan, heron, and two fighting cocks. On the other side are a sleeping dog, a cat, a buck and doe, a rabbit, and bats, animals ruled by Saturn. In the sky above are a crescent moon and a flying bat, both nocturnal entities. Two male figures, labeled “Hypochondriacus” and “Inamorato” occupy the mid-section of Burton’s frontispiece. They embody melancholia’s inherent opposition—heat and cold, old age and youth. Other elements of this page reinforce this dichotomy, but it is Inamorato (the lover) who is most closely related to th...