The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 25, 2024
Dance of Death: Death the Strangler
1850
(German, 1816–1859)
Image: 30.7 x 27.4 cm (12 1/16 x 10 13/16 in.); Sheet: 50.3 x 36.5 cm (19 13/16 x 14 3/8 in.)
Gift of Robert Hays Gries 1939.620
Catalogue raisonné: Beraldi XI.190
Location: not on view
Description
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 sweeping away everything in its path.- Against the Grain: Woodcuts from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 17-November 9, 2003).Eastward from the Rhine: Romanticism to Abstraction, 1800-1925. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 12-September 9, 1984).
- {{cite web|title=Dance of Death: Death the Strangler|url=false|author=Alfred Rethel|year=1850|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1939.620