Death in Front of the Tavern
All Resolutions
Third plate from Rethel's "Yet Another Dance of Death."
Description:
In the third woodcut of Rethel’s Dance of Death, Death has finally reached the city. He stands at the entrance of a tavern, and on the wall behind him is pasted a poster with the words Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit, (Freedom, equality, fraternity), a motto made famous by the French Revolution, and featuring in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Two glasses, reminiscent of a mountebank's cups-and-balls trick, sit on the table before him as he talks a captivated audience into believing a crown and a tobacco pipe are of equal weight. A blind (according to the verse), old woman with a walking stick is the only one who seems unimpressed, walking away from the scene with a small child.
The hat worn by Death is a Hecker hat, in reference to the 1848 Hecker uprising, an attempt, originated in the Grand Duchy of Baden, to overthrow the monarchy.
The title reads in the original German: Der Tod vor der Schenke.
This series of plates was engraved under the supervision of Hugo Bürkner.
