Museo del PradoPaseo del Prado
Hans Baldung Grien
Two late Prado panels, Harmony (The Three Graces?) and The Ages of Woman and Death, set in the context of German Renaissance art and Cranach, with recent restoration findings.
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Preview: written before the show opened
A skeleton holding an hourglass has already taken an old woman by the arm, and she clings to a pale young woman in a shroud-like veil who is trying to pull away. That is The Ages and Death, painted by Hans Baldung Grien around 1541-44, near the end of his life. The panel is 151 cm tall, so you face its figures at nearly life size.
The show is built around it and its partner, Harmony (The Three Graces?). A recent restoration brought out botanical details and a clear difference in tone between the panels, and one section covers what the cleaning revealed about how Baldung worked. The rest places him among the German Renaissance painters he knew or learned from: Dürer, in whose Nuremberg workshop he trained, and Cranach.
It hangs in Room D of the Jerónimos building, and there are no reviews yet. Entry is the standard Prado ticket, €15 or €7.50 reduced, and the last two hours of each day are free.
Look for
Death with the hourglass
Look for the skeleton in The Ages and Death gripping the old woman's arm while holding up an hourglass, a broken spear in its other hand.
The child at Death's feet
A child lies on the ground below the skeleton, its hand resting on the broken spear; the Prado reads it as dead rather than asleep.
The owl in the corner
At the lower left of The Ages and Death an owl sits on the ground and stares straight out at you.
Hell below, Christ above
Low in the background, demons torment men by a tower at the mouth of Hell, while high in the sky a crucified Christ appears in a ray of light.
Good for
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
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Image credits
8
- We Are Nature: An Immersive Audiovisual ExperienceCourtesy of CaixaForum Madrid
- Mauritshuis Thyssen-Bornemisza: Masterpieces from The HagueCourtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
- Kenny Scharf© Kenny Scharf. Courtesy of the artist
- Museo del PradoEmilio J. Rodríguez Posada (Emijrp), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- CaixaForum MadridDraceane / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Thyssen-BornemiszaLuis García (Zaqarbal), CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museo NavalFernando, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Nacional de Artes DecorativasLuis García (Zaqarbal), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0