Three Ages of Woman and Death

A young woman gazes into her mirror, lost in her own beauty, while an old crone clutches at the gauzy veil that links them and Death, a desiccated corpse, lifts an hourglass above her head; a baby plays at her feet. The single thread of sheer cloth binds infancy, bloom, age, and death into one unbroken span - a memento mori on the vanity of beauty and the brevity of life. Hans Baldung was Durer's most gifted pupil, but his imagination ran darker, toward witches, death, and eros, and here he turns his master's clear draftsmanship to a colder, more unsettling end.