Death and the Maiden

January 17, 2011 1:24 PM

Death and the Maiden
A compendium of imagery inspired (consciously or otherwise) by the art motif of "Death and the Maiden."

This motif has been popularized by Franz Schubert (and thus Ariel Dorfman, and thus Roman Polanski, etc.), and has remained a common visual trope since the Renaissance.

This blog is specifically filled with images of women encountering Death as a separate, incarnate presence -- contemplating, dancing with, being seduced by, becoming physically embodied by, etc. These are NOT images of women killing or being killed, or female interpretations of the character of "Death."

posted by hermitosis (5 comments total)

Have you seen the Girl With The Skeleton Hand?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:47 PM on January 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

In case anyone is wondering, the German text in the (current) second image reads "Mit Asche ziert der Tod das Haupt, die besser als Pomade taugt," which translates as "Death adorns the head with ashe, which serves better than pomade."
posted by jedicus at 7:39 PM on January 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I was wondering! Bug off, death -- I can go get my own goddam ash(e).
posted by hermitosis at 9:18 PM on January 17, 2011

i know attribution is hard to do on tumblr, but for many of these images (paintings, especially) it would be great to know the name of the artist.
posted by fake at 6:58 AM on January 20, 2011

I understand that desire; ever since reading Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess I have been really interested in purely visual interfaces. Granted, Tumblr automatically shows text explaining where I have reblogged stuff from, and often from those links you can find out who the artist is right away (in the cases where it is known). But mostly I am interested in the difference between absorbing information and ideas visually as opposed to textually. Stripping out as much of the text as possible forces people to focus on other things (or in some cases it forces them to stop being interested at all, which is unfortunate but I understand).
posted by hermitosis at 3:34 PM on January 23, 2011