print
- Museum number
- 1931,0721.67
- Title
- Object: Der Tod als Erwürger - Erster Auftritt der Cholera auf einem Maskenball in Paris 1831 (Death the Strangler - The first outbreak of cholera at a masked ball in Paris 1831.)
- Description
-
In the centre, Death personified, holding two bones as if he was playing the violin; surrounding him, the bodies of three dead people lying on the floor; in the top left corner, a group of musicians leaving the room; in the background to right; Cholera personified, dressed in Egyptian fancy dress seated on stairs. 1851
Wood-engraving
- Production date
- 1851
- Dimensions
-
Height: 309 millimetres
-
Width: 275 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Entry from G. Bartrum, exhib.cat., BM, London, `Dürer and his Legacy`, 2002, no.272:
This image refers to an event of some twenty years earlier in Paris, as the lettering indicates. The episode had been reported by a correspondent in Paris to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (see Z. van Manteuffel, `Rethel, p.16) The influence of sixteenth-century images of death on Rethel is demonstrated in these two prints `Death the Strangler` and its companion, `Death the Friend` (cat.no 273). The most obvious source being the series of 41 woodcuts of the Dance of Death of 1538 designed by Holbein the Younger . But Rethel`s interpretation of Death as an overwhelmingly menacing force which dominates the entire composition derives ultimately from Dürer, whose radical image of a destructive power sweeping away all in its path in ` The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse` had a pervasive influence ( cat.no 271). The strength of Dürer`s image is also reflected in Rethel`s first and most famous series of prints on Death `Yet Another Dance of Death for the Year 1848` (Auch ein Todtentanz aus dem Jahre 1848 ), which is accompanied by verses by Robert Reinick,(Leipzig, 1849; see fig. 32). The publication is closely associated with the uprisings of 1848, which took place within the socially divided German territories, and is now regarded as a major piece of counter-revolutionary iconography (see A. Boime, `Alfred Rethel`s Counter-revolutionary Death Dance`, The Art Bulletin, Dec. 1991, pp.577-98).`
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1931
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1931,0721.67
