France, 19th century / 1888
It Is a Skull Wreathed with Roses. It Dominates a Woman's Torso of Pearly Whiteness
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs It Is a Skull Wreathed with Roses. It Dominates a Woman's Torso of Pearly Whiteness as print (France, 19th century · 1888).
Publisher Edmond Deman commissioned this portfolio after he saw an 1886 exhibition of Redon's work in Brussels, Belgium.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this print as lithograph and credits Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916).
The museum's collection notes: This portfolio is one of three made by Odilon Redon inspired by avant-garde writer Gustave Flaubert’s novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874). Captivated by the book’s fantastical account of moralizing tests encountered by a hermit in the desert, Redon executed charcoal drawings and attempted to evoke that medium’s dense blackness in his lithographs. Based on the text’s darkly imaginative tone rather than its actual content, the works in this series present invented monsters and figures in otherworldly settings with jarring tonal variations. Although Redon felt that the prints effectively translated the surreal universe of his source mat
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The Cleveland Museum of ArtIt Is a Skull Wreathed with Roses. It Dominates a Woman's Torso of Pearly WhitenessOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.