‘Death and the Maiden’ or an Annunciation of Death?
Eros and Thanatos.
The theme encapsulated in the various versions of Death and the Maiden that have been created in the last 600 years are contemporaneous adaptations of the original Greek myth of the abduction of Persephone (Proserpine among the Romans) by Hades (Pluto), god of Hell. The young goddess was gathering flowers in the company of carefree nymphs when she saw a pretty narcissus and plucked it. At that moment, the ground opened; Hades came out of the underworld and abducted Persephone. This myth is a clear and profound prefiguration of what would through psychoanalysis and Freudian deconstruction come to signify a clash between Eros and Thanatos or love and death.
Above is a version of that story by Marianne Stokes (1855–1927) an Austrian painter who was much influenced by the Pre-Raphalite Brotherhood. She painted flat compositions in tempera and gesso, her paintings giving the impression of being frescoes on plaster surfaces. Her painting (see above) brings a new twist to the well-known story of Death and the maiden. The iconography has shifted away from an explicit visual portrayal of a naked maiden being lasciviously groped by a lecherous skeleton as if they were involved in a carnal relationship. As a matter of fact, the encounter of Death and the maiden may have served as an excuse to show a naked woman and some…
