The Lost Paradise from the series "The Girl and Death" (1902) by August Brömse, Aquatint, 29.7 x 40 cm. National Gallery Prague. According to Otto M. Urban,
"The Girl and Death" is a modern variant of the Dance of Death. Death (a skeleton) plays a fantastic song on the violin; the girl listens in fascination and dances a wild dance — death accompanies her life's pilgrimage. Life becomes endless suffering for the girl, cursed by the deity; her love is fatefully led from the start by tragic steps. As a symbol of the first fruits of sin the girl, in some sort of hypnotic trance, flies through space on a great snake which — in some prints of the series — holds an apple in its mouth. The concept of the landscape evokes a sense of unreality and timelessness. One of the last prints brings the whole story up to date. The girl lies prostrate on a window-sill; the anonymous roof tops of the modern city appear in the background. [197]
Bibliography
Urban, Otto M. In Morbid Colors: Art and the Idea of Decadence in the Bphemian Lands, 1880-1914. Prague: Municipal House and Arbor Vitae Press, 2006. Plate 260.
Last modified 16 April 2008