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Temperamental!: Prints in the Collection of Bryn Mawr College

Lynd Ward (American, 1905-1985), Preachers (1943). Mezzotint; published as no. 627 in Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch, 1469-1536) Moriae encomium, or, The Praise of Folly (New York: Limited Editions Club, 1943); Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine (Class of 1946)

The subject of Lynd Ward’s modern mezzotint would have been familiar to the early modern viewer—the depiction of Christian preachers as combative and quicktempered. Set in a smoky, nocturnal scene, the gaping mouths of the preachers mirror the hole of the hollow tree behind them, perhaps suggesting an equal emptiness in their speech. In contrast to the choleric preacher, who has transgressed by mistaking his own righteousness for God’s, the subject of The Four Horsemen in Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut would not have been characterized as choleric. Although the representation of the four charging figures is certainly formidable, the type of anger they embodied was considered divine, and therefore justified.

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Personality and Class
What makes us who we are? Just as today we might turn to personality tests and horoscopes to explain our dispositions and destinies, our early modern counterparts looked to the four temperaments. Decided by the configuration of planets at birth, an excess of a bodily humor could account for one's disposition and life trajectory. One's disposition also experienced day-to-day fluctuations, influenced by the movement of the planets and changes in environment or diet. These dispositions or temperaments, in turn, could be used as explanations for a rigidly hierarchical society. Artists could attribute the hardship of beggars and peasants to their phlegmatic, and therefore idle, or choleric, and therefore dangerous, qualities. A privileged soldier's choleric violence, in contrast, could be celebrated as the strong will of Napoleon—or does the phlegmatic gesture of his idle hand undermine this reading?