Death (La Morte)

The solitary face of death is the subject of Besnard’s La Morte. Such images of death and dying are common in his prints. The subject of mortality appealed to Besnard for its potential to produce strong emotions and evoke rich associations in the viewer. It also seems that death was a personal preoccupation of the artist: first, he suffered the premature death of his father; then, while struggling for artistic recognition, the loss of his mother; and finally, the lingering illness and death of his own child. For a time, it seems he was even possessed by the idea that he was destined to die young, as his artist father had. These fears manifested themselves most clearly in images of death in Besnard’s graphic work, the realm, apparently, of his most direct personal and artistic expression. By the probable date of La Morte, Besnard’s etchings had attained full artistic maturity. He packs together thick lines, bitten deeply into the copper plate, around the dead woman’s head in order to isolate it dramatically from the body. The visual separation of the woman’s head from her body may be symbolic of the soul’s departure from the body.