The German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung (better known as Hans Baldung Grien) was thought to be a contemporary of the woodcut artist Hans Freckenberg (it is presumed that Baldung acquired his "Grien" nickname at Albrect Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg due to the preponderance of Hanses at one point). Baldurg died in 1545 (the cause of death is unknown), a mere two years after Freckenberg. One of Baldurg's better known paintings is the Three Ages of Woman and Death, painted in 1510 and currently in the possession of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Famous for it's strange portrayal of a skeletal figure holding an hour-glass (similar to the recurring theme in Frackenberg's series of woodcuts), as an insurance requirement the painting was subjected to an X-Ray analysis following the theft of the Cellini Salt Cellar from the museum in 2003. Unexpectedly, the painting seemed to have been altered at an early stage, and the X-Ray appears to show the skeletal "death" figure possessing a number of extraneous upper limbs. Again this is reminiscent of the figure portrayed as "Der Ritter" in Frackenberg's woodcuts of the period. Even today, the entity continues to pop up in contemporary artwork, notably in urban graffiti work. |
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