Featured Can anyone identify this item, please?

I have no idea if it's a print or an etching, a linoleum, charcoal or ... so I'm very curious about your opinions. who made this, when, what does it represent?

 

Very Goyesque, isn't it?

Debora

 

What is goyesque?

 

As in Goya, the artist. "It was a dark and stormy night...."

 

Certainly looks to be an etching of the "memento mori" ilk.

 

Is there a simple way to determine whether its a etching?
I find it very intriguing, there is so much power in it! Is this normal for a for memento mori?

 

It seems to have a plate mark - an indentation around the edges of the image. That's a good indicator for an intaglio print, which includes things like etching and engravings. The lines look sketched, solid and dark, which is also a sign of an etching.

"Memento Mori" are images intended to remind you of your mortality, so the imagery, by its nature, should have a certain punch.

 

"Tempus fugit" rather than "Memento Mori", I think.

 

Gone With the WInd?

 

I see religion & other intellectual productions falling away, about to go up in flames, while time & space remain firm. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

 

Yeshua Ben Sirach, my biblical favourite.

 

I don't know WHY artists find it IMPOSSIBLE to sign their works LEGIBLY, but OH SO MANY DON'T!!!! This also appears to be signed, but in the MOST DARK right corner!! Also Impossible for me to bring out, but I DO see a bit of a signature....I think it shows better in the smaller image....was hoping it might show more enlarged, but NOPE!!



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the scales of time wash everything else away...

a short version....

 

I find it unusual that the plate mark is so far outside the image. Most artists I know would not waste the copper. The paper does not appear to be laid paper, so I would think 1st half of the 20th century, maybe late 19th. The rusty nail marks remind me of things I have had that were framed sort of 1920's-30's. Is any of the writing on the papers legible? The items look like things you might have to stage a still life drawing. I would think the candlestick would be identifiable as being from a specific period.

 

The more I look at it, it reminds me of a book illustration.

 

That's a very unusual hourglass.

Debora

 

Seems to really have had it in for religion/Christianity: Golgotha toppling; the body of Jesus flying off the cross.

Candle can be either the illumination of the mind or the flame of life, maybe both.

The hourglass & the sextant (?) are the only things holding their own.

 

It looks like something violent is happening like an earthquake or the like.

 

The skull and cross bones at the base of the cross seem to speak volumes, too, of the aforementioned.

 

postal scale....