alexanderarcheveque
southerngermandeath17-18
OBJECTS OF WONDER: A PRIVATE EUROPEAN KUNSTKAMMER
Southern German, late 17th/ early 18th century
PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH WITH A SCYTHE
Southern German, late 17th/ early 18th century
PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH WITH A SCYTHE
fruitwood and metal
36.2cm., 14¼in
Representations of memento mori motifs – reminders of the fleetingness of life – gained currency in the Renaissance, particularly in Reformation-led Germany. Acting as moral guardians with connotations of sin, decay, and the afterlife, such objects were valued equally as curiosities, satisfying the Renaissance obsession with human anatomy and the grotesque. The early 16th century saw the rise of skeletons personifying death – so-called Tödlein ('little deaths') – as an independent genre in Southern German small-scale sculpture. Perhaps the earliest of these is a figure by the Bavarian sculptor Hans Leinberger of circa 1520 (Beck, op. cit., fig. 63), which defines the type as a skeletal body in an advanced state of decomposition, with remnants of skin acting as stand-in clothing, and equipped with death-bringing attributes such as a bow and arrow or an hour glass. Further 16th-century examples following this scheme are illustrated in Bange (op. cit., pls. 72-73).
The present skeleton dates from the 17th century, when the popularity of this type of carving was renewed by sculptors within the Dürer Revival movement (Beck, op. cit.). While it relates to other known Tödleine in the characteristic attributes of a bow and quiver, our figure introduces the scythe as a less common motif and exhibits a menacingly long-limbed physique. The ornate base covered with trophies is not seen in known examples dated to the first half of the 17th century, indicating perhaps a later dating.
RELATED LITERATURE
E. F. Bange, Die Kleinplastik der Deutschen Renaissance in Holz und Stein, Florence and Munich, 1928, pls. 72-73; H. Beck and B. Decker (eds.), Dürers Verwandlung in der Skulptur zwischen Renaissance und Barock, exh. cat. Liebieghaus, Frankfurt am Main, 1981, pp. 298-304
www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/old-master-s...
southerngermandeath17-18
OBJECTS OF WONDER: A PRIVATE EUROPEAN KUNSTKAMMER
Southern German, late 17th/ early 18th century
PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH WITH A SCYTHE
Southern German, late 17th/ early 18th century
PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH WITH A SCYTHE
fruitwood and metal
36.2cm., 14¼in
Representations of memento mori motifs – reminders of the fleetingness of life – gained currency in the Renaissance, particularly in Reformation-led Germany. Acting as moral guardians with connotations of sin, decay, and the afterlife, such objects were valued equally as curiosities, satisfying the Renaissance obsession with human anatomy and the grotesque. The early 16th century saw the rise of skeletons personifying death – so-called Tödlein ('little deaths') – as an independent genre in Southern German small-scale sculpture. Perhaps the earliest of these is a figure by the Bavarian sculptor Hans Leinberger of circa 1520 (Beck, op. cit., fig. 63), which defines the type as a skeletal body in an advanced state of decomposition, with remnants of skin acting as stand-in clothing, and equipped with death-bringing attributes such as a bow and arrow or an hour glass. Further 16th-century examples following this scheme are illustrated in Bange (op. cit., pls. 72-73).
The present skeleton dates from the 17th century, when the popularity of this type of carving was renewed by sculptors within the Dürer Revival movement (Beck, op. cit.). While it relates to other known Tödleine in the characteristic attributes of a bow and quiver, our figure introduces the scythe as a less common motif and exhibits a menacingly long-limbed physique. The ornate base covered with trophies is not seen in known examples dated to the first half of the 17th century, indicating perhaps a later dating.
RELATED LITERATURE
E. F. Bange, Die Kleinplastik der Deutschen Renaissance in Holz und Stein, Florence and Munich, 1928, pls. 72-73; H. Beck and B. Decker (eds.), Dürers Verwandlung in der Skulptur zwischen Renaissance und Barock, exh. cat. Liebieghaus, Frankfurt am Main, 1981, pp. 298-304
www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/old-master-s...