Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle

Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle is a painted self-portrait executed in 1872 by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin. He first exhibited at the Kunstverein München in the same year, establishing his reputation in Munich's artistic community. It is now in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. [1]

Sir Brian Tuke, c.1540, anonymous after Han Holbein the Younger
Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Year1872
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions75 cm × 61 cm (30 in × 24 in)

Painted in Munich, the painting depicts a bearded Böcklin stalked by a personification of death playing a single-stringed violin in an intimation of his mortality. It is an echo of an earlier painting of Sir Brian Tuke by an anonymous painter c.1540, part of the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, in which the shadowing figure of Death is pointing at an hourglass.

Death and mortality is a repeating theme in several of Böcklin's works, including Plague, two versions of War, and five versions of Isle of the Dead.

References
  1. "Selbstbildnis mit fiedelndem Tod". Alte Nationalgalerie. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
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