Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Emblematic print of a coffin maker [print].

Accession number
PML 145850.65
Published
[place not identified] : [publisher not identified], [16--?]
Credit line
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Notes
Title from Gordon Ray inventory.
Mounted as item 65 into an album of collected prints, broadsides, drawings, and miscellaneous single sheet items, assembled by former owner Joseph Ames and entitled "Emblematical and satirical prints on persons and professions" (PML 145850).
Description
1 print : engraving ; image: 156 x 157 mm; trimmed sheet: 161 x 164 mm
Provenance
From the library of Gordon N. Ray.
Summary
Engraving shows a landscape with tomb monuments and four coffins grouped in the foreground. The skeletal figure of Death with his scythe is shown standing astride two of the coffins, as the figure of Time sits leaning over the coffin at left with his hourglass at his elbow. Overhead fly two angels with trumpets representing day (left) and night (right), the former shown flying under the rays of the sun and holding aloft a crown of laurels, the latter shown with bat's wings above a tree with a perching owl. On the ground and coffin lids are various emblematic devices, including crowns, swords, books, a caduceus, and a banner adorned with a lion, and the lid of the coffin in the corner at lower right has been pulled down, revealing the face of the corpse within.
Classification
Department