According to Hippocrates’ theory of humors, melancholy, like phlegm, blood and yellow bile, is one of the four substances that make up man. These substances have different origins and functions and serve as a counterpart to the structure of things which is essentially and repeatedly based on the four, eminently sacred number. As there are four humours in the body, the universe is composed of four elements and the time of four phases. Each element is linked to the other in a correspondent relationship. Melancholy connects to the earth, to the autumn, and – as regards the phases of a man’s life – to maturity. In healthy bodies the moods are harmoniously balanced, without the quantity of one exceeding that of the other. On the other hand, one of these is present in disproportionate quantities in the diseased bodies. From the excess of black blood in the organism derives the melancholy, as well as from the excess of bile derives a choleric temperament. The purpose of medicine – again according to Hippocrates and his successors – is to establish the correct harmony between the moods that alone guarantees the condition of health. If today the melancholy is not among the most worrying diseases, in those times trouble to underestimate the disease. The melancholy of today can be considered lucky to think that for their progenitors that same malaise was synonymous with the most cruel hardships. The melancholy was really a fool and his medicine – listed among the diseases of the psyche – could have the worst consequences. Yet only in the fourteenth century the melancholy gets the definitive consecration. At that time the concept of human genius became almost indivisible from the influence of melancholy. Saturn’s disease – this is its tutelary planet – becomes the beneficial sign of a preference for the stars. From then on, being born with melancholy in body will be the pride of every artist. In his self-portrait Dürer he paints his hand on the liver – the seat of melancholy – to indicate the origin of his genius. In his shots Marco Iannaccone wanted to resume the melancholic days he lived, days made of places, atmospheres that convey a certain feeling of emptiness and lack of something or someone. Subjective feelings that have aroused in the artist a certain malaise. It starts from the first picture that shows an unmade bed of a goodbye, to photos of gloomy scenarios, human shadows that run to get to work or their daily commitments with hysterical. The disquietude of melancholy in objects, landscapes and people is represented. A whirlwind of desolating images, sad and autumnal but true in their being, melancholy, alive and real.