La Jeune Fille et la Mort (Baldung)

Baldung trained under Durer and became his most gifted pupil, and he came back again and again to one grim subject, death seizing a young and beautiful woman. He painted this small panel in Strasbourg in 1517, barely a foot high, in oil and tempera on limewood. A corpse-like figure of Death grips the woman by the hair and points her toward an open grave, while she wrings her hands and pleads for more time. The theme was a favourite one in German art of the age, the reminder that youth and beauty end. Above their heads Baldung lettered a line in German, 'Hie must du yn', which means roughly 'here you must go'.