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THE CULT OF MELANCHOLY AND ‘SATURNIANISM’ IN THE EARLY MODERN IMAGERY OF WESTERN EUROPE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 4 (10). P. 32-52

The paper deals with the concept of ‘Melancholy’ – one of the four humors in Hippocratic medicine, practiced in Europe and Middle East from Antiquity till the very end of the Modern time. Being a “daughter of Saturn” in the late-medieval world view, it went through a curious conceptual metamorphosis along with mythological Saturn himself during the 15th – 17th centuries. In that period, a peculiar trend of Hermetic Natural Philosophy gave rise to an utterly new type of intellectuals. Model of the enlightened genius and poet-philosopher was continuously connected with the character of Melancholy among them. Its effect on the human nature was modeled not upon the gloomy anticipations of the Aristotelian school, but the solemn definitions of Plotinus, G. Piko della Mirandola, and Agrippa von Nettesheim. Seen previously as a ‘God of death and inexorable time’, ‘the Reaper’, Saturn had been transformed to become a patron of wisdom and a mentor of melancholical ‘heroic enthusiasts’. Rich iconological diversity of practically identical motives in the art of the 15th – 17th cc. illustrates these theses.

Keywords: Saturn, melancholy, humors, astrology, hermetism, iconology, Renaissance, post-medieval, Vanitas