File:Print, satirical print (BM 1862,0517.190).jpg
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Captions
Captions
Summary
[edit]print, satirical print
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Title |
print, satirical print |
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Description |
English: The Ages of Man arranged on the exterior steps of an arch: as a baby in a cradle with a lamb; at ten on his hobby-horse with a goat; at twenty with a heifer; at thirty, a soldier with a bull; at forty with a lion; at fifty, as strength declines and cunning is called for, with a fox; at sixty with a wolf; at seventy with a dog; at eighty with a cat; at ninety with an ass; at a hundred with a goose. On the interior of the arch Death, on the right, reaches across with a spear to pierce a glass pitcher held by a child so that the water of life spills out (for further detail see Comment). c.1630
Engraving |
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Depicted people | Representation of: Death | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Date |
1630s date QS:P571,+1630-00-00T00:00:00Z/8 |
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Medium | paper | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dimensions |
Height: 395 millimetres
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Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q6373 |
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Current location |
Prints and Drawings |
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Accession number |
1862,0517.190 |
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Notes |
(Text from Antony Griffiths, 'The Print in Stuart Britain', BM 1998, cat. 92.) See also Sheila O'Connell, 'The Popular Print in England', BM 1999, cat. 8.4, p. 185. The type of this composition is found throughout western printmaking from the fifteenth century to modern times. Literally hundreds of variations survive, for which see 'Die Lebenstreppe, Bilder der menschlichen Lebensalter', Städtischen Museum, Kleves, 1983. We have been unable to locate the Continental original from which this print was undoubtedly copied. The progression is in two dimensions, left to right and bottom to top. Each of the eleven steps marks a decade. From the baby to the fifty year-old life is a constant ascent; thereafter it is a descent to death. To each decade corresponds an animal, and the meaning is explained by the couplet put alongside. So the seventy year-old is like a dog: 'News hee affects to hear and tell, But dogglike loves at home to dwell'. This much is standard. Less usual are the three Fates of classical mythology who spin under the arch; it is more usual to find Death in this position. Above them is the moral 'Watch therefore for yee know not what houre ye Lord doth come'. The print was 'sould by Tho: Jenner at the royall Exchange', and there is no sign that this address replaces an earlier one. It appears in his catalogue of 1662. The men are all dressed in the latest French fashion, and the costume suggests a date in the 1630s. Other prints of this subject were made in England at the time. Samuel Pepys' collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge, contains a woodcut, 'The historie of the life of man', published in Blackfriars in 1616 (2973, no.443). Walton's 1655 catalogue lists an engraving 'One of once a man and twice a child, or the severall ages of men and women, shewing their rising and falling, both of high and low, rich and poor, from the cradle to the grave'.M. Jones 'The Print in Early Modern England: An Historical Oversight', New Haven and London, 2010, pp.28-32, especially footnote 47. |
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Source/Photographer | https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1862-0517-190 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Permission (Reusing this file) |
© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
Licensing
[edit]This image is in the public domain because it is a mere mechanical scan or photocopy of a public domain original, or – from the available evidence – is so similar to such a scan or photocopy that no copyright protection can be expected to arise. The original itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
This tag is designed for use where there may be a need to assert that any enhancements (eg brightness, contrast, colour-matching, sharpening) are in themselves insufficiently creative to generate a new copyright. It can be used where it is unknown whether any enhancements have been made, as well as when the enhancements are clear but insufficient. For known raw unenhanced scans you can use an appropriate {{PD-old}} tag instead. For usage, see Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag. ![]() |
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current | 09:56, 8 May 2020 | ![]() | 1,200 × 1,600 (349 KB) | Copyfraud (talk | contribs) | British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Satirical prints in the British Museum 1630 #28 |
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