Leseprobe

The Horrors of War in Seventeenth-Century Art and Literature 128 are made to the hope of a better life for the deceased child in the hereafter, free from all worldly tribulations.10 It is therefore not surprising that the painful subject of child death was also reflected in contemporary visual art. Probably the most striking evidence of this is Stefano della Bella’s depiction of Death Carrying a Child (fig. 1) from his series Les cinq Morts ( The Five Deaths ) produced in 1648. The climax of Les cinq Morts is Death on the Battle­ f ield (fig. 2), which, unlike the other images in the series, has a rectangular format and is larger. The etching is undoubt- edly associated with the war experiences of the artist him- self.11 Both the print and the surviving drawings on which it is based provide information about how the artist pro- cessed his own experiences of the horrors of war.On a draw- ing in Vienna12 the dynamic lines and masterly depiction of Death as a horseman clearly show the artist’s intense engage- ment with his subject matter. This is confirmed by another drawing in Hamburg, in which della Bella sketched horse cadavers from nature (fig. 3).13 He then used these sketches as anatomical studies for his depiction of Death on the Battle­ f ield . An extremely rare example of the horrors of war depicted in sculpture has been preserved in New York, in the form of the limewood sculpture entitled Death on Horseback (fig. 4). Such images, which have a famous precedent in such works as Dürer’s Riders of the Apocalypse , are found quite fre- quently in prints, but not in painting or sculpture.This work, produced by an unknown German wood sculptor in the mid-seventeenth century, clearly shows the influence of della Bella’s print. The skeletal figure of Death riding over the battlefield reveals a number of modifications. In contrast to della Bella’s image,Death has already completed his mission: the bow in his left hand is unstrung, with the loose string wrapped around the shaft. His right hand, by contrast, is FIG. 2 Stefano della Bella, Death on the Battlef ield, from the series Les Cinq Morts , 1650–1664, etching, plate h. 19.1 cm, w. 29.8 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 68.736.1