Der Tod als Erwürger (Death as a Strangler)

Alfred Rethel

National Gallery of Art

Printed with black lines and shading on almond-white paper, a skeleton stands among three prone bodies and plays two human bones like a violin in this vertical wood engraving. At the center of the composition, the skeleton wears a long, hooded robe tied around the waist with a rope. It stands with one foot crossed in front of the other with its ear bent to the bone used as a fiddle. Two men and a woman lie on the floor around him. The woman wears a domino covering her eyes and a low-cut gown, and one man’s full-face grinning mask has slipped down. One fists grips the fabric of his pants, and his toes are curled. A third person dressed as a jester lies collapsed on hands and knees. On a platform on a stage, a person dressed as a skeleton or a mannequin sits wearing a robe and Egyptian khat, a shoulder-length cloth headdress, and holds a three-tailed flail. Three people in the shadows beyond this figure lunge to our right, presumably fleeing. Four men dressed in tunics and leggings and carrying musical instruments rush from the left platform through an open door in the upper left. Three turn to look at the skeleton and bodies with open mouths while the fourth holds his nose with his cloak. An inscription in Gothic lettering in the bottom center margin reads, “Der Tod als Erwürger.”