The Gravediggers Death, Carlos Schwabe, 1895 “Death is portrayed as a beautiful woman (his own wife) who sits like a great bird aside the grave. The wings appear to caress and soothe the old man, while she holds a dim glow in the palm of her hand, representing the life transcending to the other world. The painting is a Symbolist movement classic, as it uses the entire Symbolist repertory of signs and plants. The critic for Art et Décoration compared Schwabe to Durer and wrote: ‘In the reverberation of his faculties, all of which are excited at the same time, the reflections of tragic, bizarre and mysterious dreams are mixed under the artist’s fingers, in which one deciphers the symbolic signs of confused destinies and, at the same time, infinitely touching refinements of feeling’.”
—Lilithgallery.com
