689 - 24 figures from the Zizenhausen Danse Macabre

24 figures from the Zizenhausen Danse Macabre Terracotta with the original polychromy in oils, paper. With printed paper strips on the plinths bearing dialogues between the figures depicted and admonitions in German. Five figures with older repairs. Attributed to Stockach, Anton Sohn (1769 - 1841), presumably before 1841. This series of figures is the Zizenhausen Danse Macabre, first produced in 1822/23 by Anton Sohn (1769-1841), who was active in Zizenhausen near Stockach. The models were based on the prints by Matthäus Merian the Elder, published in 1623, reproducing the painted Danse Macabre on the cemetery wall of the Dominican monastery in Basel. Alongside the first human beings, Adam and Eve, the figures personify the medieval world of faith and society with its hierarchy of estates. All the figures were affixed with paper strips bearing texts in German; versions in English and French are also known to have been produced for tourists undertaking the Grand Tour. The figures depicted are the Empress, the King, the Duke, the Duchess, the Noblewoman, the Herald, the Abbot, the Abbess, the Jew, the Pagan Woman, the Pagan Man, the Mayor, the Lawyer, the Grocer, the Cook, the Peasant, the Painter, the Young Man, the Maiden, the Cripple, the Usurer, Adam and Eve, the Ossuary, and Martin Luther preaching. Literature Cf. Seipel, Das Weltbild der Zizenhausener Figuren, Constance, 1984, pp. 58 ff.