stages
Death and the Skull
the skeleton, the reaper
An office, not an ending. Note what Death is holding and who is being made to look at it.
Only two works here carry Death, and between them they hold the whole argument.
The Apocalypse gives the figure a name and a mount and nothing else: “And behold a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death. And hell followed him.” That is a sentence about office. Death is a rider with a job, and the text does not describe his face.
Dürer's engraving of 1513 makes the job specific. Death rides at the knight's left hand and holds up an hourglass, and Conway's reading is the one the archive holds: “Death turns round at the knight, holding up the hour-glass to his view: not in malice, not in wrath, but in sad and solemn warning.” The glass is the point. Death in this print is not attacking, he is informing, and the knight rides on without turning his head.
Pamela Colman Smith's card of 1909 keeps the office and drops the malice further still. Waite: “The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end.” No weapon, and the ranks of the world fall anyway. The banner he carries is not a death's head but a rose.
What both pictures refuse is the reading a modern eye brings, that Death is the villain. In this material he is closer to a functionary of time, and the skull under the roots of Dürer's plate is a fact left lying about rather than a threat.
Contested
Two works is a thin base and the entry should be read as thin. Conway is reading the print long after it was cut. The snakes in Death's hair on the Dürer are marked here as observed: Conway reads Death and the hourglass and does not name them.
Sources
- The Apocalypse of Saint John, Douay Rheims, Challoner revision, : Quoted from the Challoner revision, the English text the archive uses for the Apocalypse throughout.
- William Martin Conway, Literary Remains of Albrecht Durer, : Conway's translations and commentary. A nineteenth-century scholar reading the prints, not Durer explaining himself.
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, : Waite commissioned the 1909 designs and wrote the key to them, so his account is the closest thing the deck has to an author's statement.
Where it appears
Across the archive · 9
Plates that carry the symbol, tagged by eye and not yet decoded: first where it is the central motif, then where it plays a secondary part. Each opens in the viewer; the key and the notes come with the entry.
Central motif · 6
Death (XIII)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909an armoured skeleton on a white horse carries a black banner with a white rose; a king lies fallen with his crown beside him, a child and a maiden kneel, a bishop stands with clasped hands; the sun rises between two towers, a river with a boat behind; Death as the central motif, the Horse, the Sun and the Crown by eyeWaite, 1911 “The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate.”
Knight, Death, and the DevilAlbrecht Dürer, 1513a knight in armour rides between two figures: Death, crowned and snake-haired, holding up an hourglass from a pale horse, and a horned figure with a pike walking behind. A dog runs at the horse's heels and a skull lies among the roots at the foot of the plateConway, 1889 “They were intended to represent the Sanguine and Melancholic temperaments and to shadow forth the religious and intellectual spirits of the day.”
Si de quattuor unum Occidas, subitò mortuus omnis eritMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618four naked men, one striking another down with a clubMichael Maier, 1618 “Si de quattuor unum Occidas, subitò mortuus omnis erit.”
Adonis ab apro occiditur, cui Venus accurrens tinxit Rosas sanguineMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618Adonis dead in the foreground, the boar behind, Venus at the rose treeMichael Maier, 1618 “Adonis ab apro occiditur, cui Venus accurrens tinxit Rosas sanguine.”
Dolo Typhon Osyridem trucidat, artúsque illius Hinc inde dissipat, sed hos collegit Isis inclytaMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the crowned body in the open coffin, the killers around it, Isis gathering at the backMichael Maier, 1618 “Dolo Typhon Osyridem trucidat, artúsque illius Hinc inde dissipat, sed hos collegit Isis inclyta.”
Infans Philosophicus tres agnoscit patres, ut OrionMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the men gathered over the hide and the skull on the ground between themMichael Maier, 1618 “Infans Philosophicus tres agnoscit patres, ut Orion.”
Secondary motif · 3
Regem lupus voravit & vitæ crematus reddiditMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the wolf over the body of the king, and the burning at the right where he is given backMichael Maier, 1618 “Regem lupus voravit & vitæ crematus reddidit.”Central motif: the King and the Queen
Oedypus Sphynge superata & trucidato Lajo patre matrem ducit in uxoremMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the sphinx on the rock at the upper left, the body of the father below, Oedipus among the crowdMichael Maier, 1618 “Oedypus Sphynge superata & trucidato Lajo patre matrem ducit in uxorem.”Central motif: the Demon and the Monster
Draco mulierem, & hæc illum interimit, simulque sanguine perfundunturMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the dragon coiled over the fallen woman before a ruined archMichael Maier, 1618 “Draco mulierem, & hæc illum interimit, simulque sanguine perfunduntur.”Central motif: the Serpent and the Dragon
On the same plate
