The Anatomy of Melancholy

Do you see the wood, ugly with nothing but trunks? So our beauty, travelling its long road, Always loses something and shines less; Whatever we had is diminished by afflictions. What was once desired has fallen, and droops through childbirth; Motherhood has taken much of that beauty from me, And advancing age has snatched it away with hurried step.

As a tree that grows in the green wood, With fruit and leaves, and blossoms in the summer, Looks ugly as a bare trunk in the winter, So our beauty runs its course and travels on, Dwindles, loses and comes to nothing. Once admired, childbirth has brought me to this; Motherhood has robbed me of my grace, And bent old age comes quickly on.

To conclude with Chrysostom: when you see a fair and beautiful person, a splendid courtesan, a beautiful lady “who makes your mouth water,” “a charming girl whom you could easily love,” a comely woman with bright eyes, a cheerful face, a shining look and a pleasing grace, wrenching your soul and increasing your lust, consider that what you love is only earth. It is mere excrement that so torments you and that you so admire; then your raging soul will find rest. Remove the skin from her face and you will see every kind of foulness beneath it: that beauty is a surface of skin, bones, nerves and sinews. Imagine her ill, now wrinkled, grey-haired, hollow-cheeked and old. Within, she is full of filthy phlegm, stinking, putrid, excremental matter: mucus and snot in her nostrils, spittle in her mouth, water in her eyes—what filth in her brain!—and so forth.

Or take her at her best and examine her closely in the light. Stand nearer, nearer still: you will notice almost as much and love less, as Cardan aptly writes, “Those who see sharply love less,” though Scaliger mocks him for it.

If someone sees her at close range or studies her in such a posture, whoever he is, by the true rules of symmetry and proportion—I mean those of Albrecht Dürer, Lomazzo and Taisnier—question him about her. If he is “a discriminating observer of forms,” he will find many faults in her features and defects of colour; in her shape, perhaps one side of the face larger than the other, or a crooked nose, bad eyes, prominent veins, hollows around the eyes, wrinkles, pimples, red streaks, freckles, hairs, warts, moles, unevenness, roughness, scabbiness, pallor, yellowness and as many colours as on a turkey’s neck, with many unseemly features in the other parts. “There is something you would wish added, something you would cut away.” One leers, another frowns, a third gapes or squints, and so on.

And what he says is true: “To the careful observer, a perfect face, free from fault, is rare.” Seldom will you find a faultless face, as I have often observed. This defect or disproportion appears throughout body and mind, not in the face alone. She is beautiful, certainly, but foolish; pretty, comely and seemly, with a majestic presence, but perhaps domineering, unchaste, “harsh and unjust,” self-willed. She is rich but deformed; has a sweet face but bad manners, no upbringing, a rude, wanton hussy. She has a trim body, but otherwise she is a filthy wench, a complete slattern of a bad sort.