[a] Lesson in Anatomy of Professor Tulp, and the fragment of a similar work, both at The Hague.
[c] Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia.
The use of a skeleton as a symbol of death in painting seems to have been unusual during the Renaissance till towards the end of the fifteenth century. The earliest artist of note in this period to adopt it, was Jean Prevost who represented a man taking a letter from a skeleton without seeing the messenger.[a] Then came Grien who painted three works of the kind. In the first Death holds an hour-glass at the back of a woman, and points to the position of the sand[b]; in the second the bony figure has clutched a girl by the hair[c]; and the third represents a skeleton apparently kissing a girl.[d] They are all hideous works, and might well have acted as a warning to succeeding artists. After Grien the use of a skeleton in design was practically confined to the smaller German masters till the middle of the second half of the sixteenth century, when it disappeared from serious work. From this time on, for the next three centuries artists of repute rarely introduced a skeleton into a painting, though it is to be found occasionally in engravings. One might have supposed that the unsightly form had been abandoned with the imps, evil spirits, and other crudities of past days, but it was not to be. The search for novelties in recent times has only resulted in the resuscitation of bygone eccentricities, and we must not be surprised that the skeleton is amongst them.
Modern artists have displayed considerable ingenuity in the use of the skeleton, but the results have necessarily only succeeded in degrading the art. Rethel figures a skeleton in the costume of a monk who is ringing a bell at a dance.[a] Several of the dancers have fallen dead, apparently from plague, and the whole scene is ghastly. Henneberg has a Fortune allegory in which Death is about to seize a horseman who is chasing a nude woman,[b] this design being a slight modification of a variety of prints executed in the sixteenth century. Thoma uses a skeleton in a most bizarre manner. He substitutes it for the serpent in a picture of Adam and Eve,[c] and in another work associates it with Cupid.[d] Two lovers are talking, and Death stands behind the woman whose hat Cupid is lifting. A terrible picture with a political bearing was painted by Uhde.[e] It represents a crowd of revolutionists rushing towards a bridge, while a skeleton in modern costume waves a sword and cheers them on. These instances suffice to indicate the difficulty in the production of a fine work of art with so hideous a form as a skeleton thrown into prominence.