F Hanfstaengl, after a painting by GCR von Max, 1869This is a print recording a lost painting by Gab
F Hanfstaengl, after a painting by GCR von Max, 1869This is a print recording a lost painting by Gabriel von Max of 1869, painted in Munich. An anatomist meditates, chin in hand, on the body of a young, beautiful woman, pulling back the cloth that covers her body in order to gaze upon her. On the desk beside him are open books, a lamp, and human and animal skulls. As well as being tools of study, they function as symbols of death, as does the moth that has alighted next to the cadaver.The picture could be regarded as bordering on necrophilia, and would no doubt have been condemned by the British art experts of the day, but the enormous popularity of such morbid pictures as Arnold Böcklin’s ‘Island of the dead’ (1880) attest to the interest in pictures of such themes, however unhealthy they may be considered. -- source link
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