By the year 1500, a new genre of visual and literary culture was thriving in Europe: the dance of death or danse macabre. Dancing with Death will feature works on paper spanning from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries that highlight this visual tradition of bringing death to life. By animating death and transforming a state of being into a character, Europeans both poked fun of and meditated on mortality. This exhibition highlights both sides of the macabre coin: fear of death and fun in life.
Anonymous German, “The Test of Faith by the Devil from The Art of Dying,” circa 1470, Woodcut, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002.260
Michael Wolgemut, Image of Death from The Nuremberg Chronicle,1493, Woodcut with watercolor, The Karen G. and Dr. Elgin W. Ware, Jr. Collection, 2003.12
Stefano Della Bella (Florence, Italy, 1610-1664), “Death Carrying off a Child, from The Five Deaths,” circa 1648, Etching with burin, second state of three, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002.1371
Sebald Beham (Nuremberg, Germany, 1500 – Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1550), “Death and Three Nude Women,” circa 1546-50, Engraving, second state of three, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1981.43
Anonymous German, “Death with a Crossbow or Death Stays on Target,” circa 1635, Engraving, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002.2589
John Bell (Edinburg, Scotland, 1763 – Rome, Italy, 1820), “Reclining Male Cadaver” from Anatomy of the Bones, Muscles, and Joints, by John Bell, 1794, Engraving and etching, The Karen G. and Dr. Elgin W. Ware, Jr. Collection, 2000.4
Alfred Rethel (Aachen, Germany, 1816 – Düsseldorf , Germany, 1859), “Death as an Enemy,” 1851, Wood engraving (by Gustav Richard Steinbrecher), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Isidore Simkowitz in memory of Amy Cecelia Simkowitz-Rogers, 1995.177
Luis Jiménez (El Paso, Texas, 1940 – Hondo, New Mexico, 2006), “Dance with the Skeleton,” 1984, Lithograph, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1985.79
Credit
Organized by Elizabeth Welch, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Prints, Drawings, and European Paintings, Blanton Museum of Art.