Bathsheba Bathing / Death as a Mercenary Embracing a Young Woman

This small fir panel is painted on both sides, and it asks to be turned over. On the front, Bathsheba bathes, the beauty the biblical King David watched from his roof. Turn it, and Death, got up as a common mercenary soldier, seizes a young woman and drags her against him. Manuel knew that soldier's world at first hand, having marched to the wars in Italy, and death pressed against a desirable woman is an idea he came back to more than once. He worked both scenes around 1517 to mimic chiaroscuro drawings on tinted paper, so the panel in your hand pretends to be a mere sheet, signed on each face with his monogram and a little dagger.