人生の諸段階と死

Hans Baldung Grien painted this around 1541, and he had spent much of his life circling one subject, the meeting of a beautiful woman and her own death. Here he lays it out plainly. A young woman stands at the centre, an old woman beside her, and behind them a rotting corpse, Death himself, holds up a broken lance and grips the old woman's arm. She in turn clutches at the younger one, so the pull toward the grave passes hand to hand down the line. A baby sleeps on the ground at the start of the same road. Baldung had trained with Albrecht Dürer, and like his teacher he treats mortality as something to look at steadily rather than flinch from. An owl crouches in the lower corner, and behind the figures a small crucifixion glows against a darker vision of hell.