Is it a gesture ? As you like it; but then it is a very complex gesture, or a series of gestures. The melancholic posture has a history. One might imagine that it consists of the progressively more conscious recognition of a given illness. It is much more than that. It consists of the complex elaboration of an attitude. A camera still, which has an immediate meaning, calling for interpretation ; and an image given to all. It might have emerged spontaneously, and then have been worked upon, elaborated, beautified. It relates both to nature and to culture.