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Temperamental!: Prints in the Collection of Bryn Mawr College

Albrect Dürer (German, 1471-1528), The Men's Bath House (late 16th century?). Woodcut on laid paper; monogram in plate; Gift of Howard L. Gray, Professor of History, 1915-1940; 1946.26

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1. Alex Katz (American, b. 1927), Jessica (1994)published by the Print Club of New York, Inc. 3-color woodcut on Hosho paper, edition 79/200, signed in pencil, Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine (Class of 1946) and Howard H. Levine, 2012.27.508.
2. After Paul Delaroche (French, 1797-1856), Napoleon Bonaparte (1870-75), after 1838 painting. Engraving; Gift of Abby A. K. Turner Van Pelt Grimscom, Class of 1952, Katherine Drexel Van Pelt Beaver, and Charles B. P. Van Pelt, VP.786. Dressed in military costume and with a sword at his hip, Napoleon poses confidently in the comfort of his study. Napoleon was known for his choleric nature, yet like Suyderhoef’s peasant above right, he also rests his right hand inside the opening of his jacket. This detail may appear odd, but it can be explained by the subject's social class. In depictions of peasants, this phlegmatic gesture was used to signify laziness. However, in depictions of the ruling class, the same gesture adopts the positive associations of temperance, leisure, and calm. Used in a depiction of Napoleon, the gesture may also be an ironic allusion to the subject's relatively low birth.
4. Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), St. Christopher Facing Left (1521). Engraving; monogram in plate; Gift of Eleanor May Morris, Class of 1941, MA 1970, in honor of Carol Biba, Head of Public Relations, Bryn Mawr College, 1950-1972; 2007.9.3.
7. Albert Alexander Paul Rouffio (French, 1855-1911), Hérodias (c. 1878), after 1875 painting. Etching; signed in plate; Gift of Abby A. K. Turner Van Pelt Grimscom, Class of 1952, Katherine Drexel Van Pelt Beaver, and Charles B. P. Van Pelt; VP.346 While Symbolist artists of this period tend to focus on Salomé’s role in the death of John the Baptist, it was her mother Hérodias who ordered his beheading after he criticized her marriage to Herod. These artists, including Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and Aubrey Beardsley, prefer to romanticize the dangerous but feminine allure of Salomé’s dance, rather than her mother’s more masculine, murderous rage as characteristic of the femme fatale. Rouffio, however, like Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) in his novella Hérodias (1877), shifts attention from the youthful daughter to Hérodias herself. His Hérodias reclines seductively, clutching her marital pillow and stroking the hair of the beheaded victim—an unnervingly calm, yet vengeful choleric. He discovers room for Hérodias to retain her femininity and depicts her as the femme fatale of this story.
8. Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1511). Woodcut, published as plate 3/16 in Apocalypsis cum figuris (Latin edition, 1511, of The Apocalypse, 1497/1498), initialed in plate, Gift of Marcus Stanley, 2012.15.1

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Gender

Prints, such as the enlarged reproduction of a woodcut from the Swiss physician and alchemist Leonhard Thurneysser’s book Quinta Essentia (1574) seen here, could function as teaching tools, diagraming the four temperaments as gendered attributes of bodies. The temperaments developed masculine and feminine associations that reinforced the idea that melancholic and phlegmatic temperaments were more appropriate for women, and the choleric and sanguine temperaments were better suited to men.
Read in a contemporary light, this illustration also suggests that the potential for all temperaments (and genders) resides within a single body. Prints in this section nuance the four humors as not strictly masculine or feminine. Like gender, the temperaments are fluid. These prints further suggest that issues of labor, class, race, and sexuality are inherently tied to gender performativity and thus temperamental interpretation.