Melancholic Temperament (so-called Head of a Youth)

In 1511 a face could still be read as a report on the body. Physicians followed the ancient doctrine of four humours, blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile, and whichever of them dominated was thought to set a person's temperament. The melancholic was ruled by black bile, linked with earth and autumn, and believed to be brooding and withdrawn. Schäufelein's young man, with a mop of reddish hair and his head tilted, was long catalogued simply as the head of a youth. Today the museum calls him the melancholic and hangs him beside a young woman painted as the sanguine type in the same year. The panel is barely 32 centimetres high.