Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Souvenir sheets in commemoration of Emperor Rudolph II
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Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Memento Mori: the Danse Macabre of Stefano della Bella (1610 - 1664)
It was probably during his last years in France that della Bella began an updated and abbreviated version of the Dance of Death. This typically Northern and medieval subject usually showed Death in a variety of situations, carrying away victims of every age and walk of life. It appears that, while in France, the Florentine printmaker etched four oval scenes of Death's conquest, including Death Carrying a Child, three of which take place in cemeteries and the fourth on the battlefield. A horizontal version of Death triumphing in war probably also dates to these years. At the end of his life, della Bella took up the theme again, creating three more episodes in the oval format—two of these were left incomplete at his death. In the early prints particularly, Death is as energetic as he is ruthless—here he rushes into the cemetery bearing a screaming and struggling child. The setting is the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris, a site with which della Bella was undoubtedly familiar, since many publishers and print dealers had their shops on the ground floor of the charnel houses.
(source: http://www.metmuseum.org/)
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