The story
In a room of Eggenberg Palace on the western edge of Graz, an army of skeletons sweeps across a burning landscape. The Triumph of Death, painted in 1597 by Jan Brueghel the Elder after his father Pieter Bruegel's famous composition, is one of the pictures people come to the Alte Galerie to see, and it suits a collection that likes to dwell on the folly and brevity of human life.
The gallery belongs to the Universalmuseum Joanneum, the Styrian state museum founded in 1811 by Archduke Johann, a Habsburg prince devoted to Styria. Its paintings and sculptures moved into Eggenberg, the Baroque palace of the Eggenberg princes, in 2005, and the curator Ulrich Becker hung them in thematic groups under the title The Great World Theatre.
The visit begins with the Middle Ages, among Gothic saints and crucifixions, including the carved Admont Madonna from the early fourteenth century, part of one of the most important medieval collections in Austria. Later rooms bring the Renaissance and Baroque. Here hangs Hercules and the Pygmies, painted around 1535 by Dosso Dossi, court painter to the dukes of Ferrara, where the giant hero is beset by a swarm of tiny warriors.
