Melancholia (Lucas Cranach the Elder, Copenhagen)

Melancholia is an oil-on-panel painting by the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, created in 1532.

A winged woman, lost in thought, is slicing a cane, perhaps intending to make another hoop.

She is the personification of melancholy, similar to the winged genius from the engraving of the same name by Albrecht Dürer, executed 18 years before the painting of Cranach.

Many details of the picture are a reference to these analogies: the jump of witches in a black cloud, and an army in which soldiers fall from their horses.

The Unterlinden Museum in Colmar owns a vertical version from the same year which presents a number of similarities.