Seated Nude Male Figure (recto); Ornamental Designs of Foliage, a Grotesque Head, and a Leg (verso) 1585 - 1598

Agostino Carracci rendered this Seated Nude Male Figure with pen and brown ink. Observe the subject: an athletic male nude, his gaze cast downward. This pose—the so-called melancholic attitude—dates back to antiquity and has been used to depict thinkers, prophets, and, most notably, the god Saturn. We find this posture in funerary art, where the deceased is depicted lost in thought, embodying a potent symbol of mourning. Consider Dürer's "Melancholia I," where the winged figure sits, head in hand, surrounded by tools of creation, yet paralyzed by a profound sense of creative stagnation. The gesture resurfaces in Rodin's "The Thinker," an emblem of contemplation and the human condition. Carracci's figure shares this introspective mood, drawing on our collective memory to evoke a similar feeling of contemplation.