My project examines the pictorial and theoretical dimensions of the concept of melancholy as they were understood, expressed, and, most importantly, figured by Renaissance artists. By focusing on the figural pose traditionally associated with the melancholic state and humor, it presents a hitherto unexplored connection between Northern and Southern Europe, considering the different ways in which artists self-identified as melancholics and expressed this understanding in their art. In both Italy and the North, the basic figural structure is appropriated for somewhat different ends. The relationship of the isolated figure to its cultural context varies, either declaring a special creative status, responsive to a higher inspiration, or setting the figure apart as an outsider with special insight into the follies of this lower world. Chapter One serves as an introduction to the pose of melancholy, its historical weight and the visual meaning carried by the isolated, brooding figure, generally wth lowered head supported by a hand and often with legs crossed. This is the figure epitomized in Dürer's Melancolia I. Chapter Two considers Michelangelo as the exemplar of a melancholic and addresses the cultural and personal identification of him as such. The relevance of the melancholy pose to the identification of the artist in sixteenth-century Italy is demonstrated by Raphael's depiction of the melancholy Heraclitus in The School of Athens, which I accept as portrait of Michelangelo; articulated in his poetry, the artist's self-identification as melancholic is visually declared in his Last Judgment. Chapter Three addresses the works of Hieronymus Bosch, in whose art the figure of melancholy runs as something of a leitmotif, although it has remained generally unobserved; the figure serves as a running comment on the thematic concerns of the paintings--such as The Garden of Earthly Delights and Death and the Miser--at once participant and outsider. Chapter Four explores the role of melancholics in specific paintings by Bruegel, especially The Triumph of Death, and the relationship between melancholics and fools in the artist's oeuvre. Chapter Five has at its focus Titian's Flaying of Marsyas and the artist's self-inclusion in the guise of the melancholy Midas. As a conclusion, this chapter reflects on the personal significance of melancholy for Renaissance artists.

Den här uppsatsen behandlar skapandet och designen av en arkitektur över ett system för behandling av depression och andra psykiska sjukdomar via internet, kallat Melencolia. Ett av kraven för detta projekt är att skapa ett system som kan utökas i framtiden. Vi har härlett detta krav till begreppet modularitet och för att skapa en modulär arkitektur för Melencolia har vi undersökt vad begreppet innebär och härlett det till att vara ett kvalitetsdrag hos flera kvalitetsattribut däribland ”maintainability” och ”reusability”. Med hjälp av ”Attribute Driven Design” kan en arkitektur skapas som fokuserar kring en viss typ av kvalitetsattribut. Eftersom modularitet inte är ett kvalitetsattribut utan en kvalitetsegenskap har vi varit tvungna att ändra indata till denna metod, från kvalitetsattribut till kvalitetsegenskap. Vidare har vi härlett och lagt fram en ny metod för att mäta kvalitetsegenskaper i en mjukvaruarkikektur.Slutligen har vi använt vår metod för att mäta graden av modularitet i Melencolias arkitektur. / This thesis considers the problem of creating and designing an architecture for a software project that will result in a system for treatment of depression on the Internet. One of the requirements for this project, named by Melencolia, is to create a system which can be extended in the future. From this requirement we have derived the concept of modularity. In order to create a modular architecture we have concluded that modularity is a quality characteristic of multiple quality attributes such as "maintainability" and "reusability".We deploy Attribute-Driven Design (ADD) in this Melencolia project. By doing this, an architecture that is focused around modularity can be created. Since modularity is not a quality attribute, but rather a quality characteristic, we had to change the input to ADD from a quality attribute to a quality characteristic.Furthermore, we derive and propose a new method for quality characteristic evaluation of software architectures.Finally we apply our aforementioned method on the architecture of Melencolia and by doing this we get an indication on how well our proposed architecture satisfies modularity.