The splendor of pain: melancholy in the dawn of the modern age

Abstract

The medical (humoral) theory that explained the existence of melancholia remained unchanged since its Hippocratic- Galenic formulation in late Antiquity to the Modernity, but its social value suffered several transformations. Florentine Neoplatonism, with its opinion of human freedom as the highest dignity of man and its association between genius and madness, allowed to conceive melancholy as a desirable gift (and not only as a disease caused by excess of black bile in the body): gift which was associated with a peculiar aesthetic and was associated with different phenomena in the theology, love, science and art fields.