Dance of Death: Death the Strangler
Medium
woodcut
Dimensions
image: 30.7 × 27.4 cm · sheet: 50.3 × 36.5 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Robert Hays Gries
Accession Number
1939.620
Tags
male
About this artwork
Death the Strangler refers to an event of some twenty years earlier in Paris, as the caption explains: "The first outbreak of cholera at a masked ball in Paris in 1831." Rethel was influenced by 16th-century images of death, such as Hans Holbein's Dance of Death (on view in gallery 109). Here, the artist's interpretation of death as an overwhelmingly menacing force derives from Albrecht Dürer, whose Apocalypse: The Four Horsemen (also on view in gallery 109) depicts death as a destructive power ...