THE BATH HOUSE

Men's bath was an ordinary thing in Dürer's era. The print is especially interesting because the artist depicted himself and his friends, members of the circle of Nuremberg humanists, among those who listen to the musicians. In the foreground, we can see brothers Stephan and Lukas Paumgartner. To the right (the man drinking from a tankard) there is Willibald Pirckheimer. The man leaning against a water pump in the left is probably Michael Wolgemut. But some researchers assume that Dürer depicted himself three times in one picture: the man leaning against a water pump, the one who plays a recorder, and the youth away from the group that observes the whole scene. At the same time, some of the researchers see the four figures in the foreground as the embodiment of four human temperaments. The man with a flower is a sanguine person, the one that faces him with a scraper is choleric, Willibald Pirckheimer is phlegmatic and, finally, the one against a water pump is a melancholic person, the melancholy suiting the artistic temperament.