The Choleric Temperament – (Hans Leonhard Schaufelein) Previous Next


Artist:

Date: 1511

Size: 31 x 20 cm

Technique: Wood

This work belongs to a set of personifications of the Four Temperaments. A landmark in the history of art, the series is the first post-antique representation of the theory of the physician and writer Hippocrates (460–370 BCE) that human well-being and health depend on the balance of four bodily fluids, or humors. Each humor was later linked to a particular personality. Nervous, energetic, ambitious, aggressive, and inclined to emotional outbursts, a person with a choleric temperament was thought to have small but pronounced muscles, sharply defined features, and abundant hair, as seen here.

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