comédie-mort |
Bresdin's prints rank with the greatest achievements in nineteenth century etching-indeed, he produced only one painting, but over one hundred-fifty engravings. Drawn to subjects that combine the biblical supernatural with the mysteries of nature and of death, he produced images of such brilliant, minute detail that "they could stand any degree of magnification without needing it" (Harold Joachim). The fantastic landscape of the "Comédie de la Mort" has much in common with Bosch or with the theme of the temptation of the hermit, even as it suggests an animistic vision of nature in which, as Baudelaire claimed in "Correspondances," "living pillars emit garbled words.". |
