Also found in chapter five, Principles of Design, are the two paintings “the three ages of woman and Death” painted by Hans Baldung Grien, and “Venus with a Mirror” by Titian.
Both paintings were completed at the same relative time, about fifty years apart. Both paintings also depict a woman admiring her reflection in a mirror. However, in “Three ages of woman and death” the woman is holding a small hand mirror and in “venus with a Mirror” it is a cherub holding the mirror in which the Goddess Venus admires herself in. Coincidentally there is also the form of a child in Hans Baldung Grien’s painting, only rather than a cherub it is the woman’s younger self playing amidst the scarf tied around her hair.
While both paintings are very similar their major difference is ironic. In “The three ages of woman and Death” the young woman is gazing into the hand miroor and admiring her current beauty. This painting draws attention to mortality and the aging process of humans. It depicts the woman’s child-self, more interested in playing than anything else, the woman in her “current state” admiring her youthful beauty, and then her older self fighting off death who is holding the ever significant hour glass over the young woman’s head, as though waiting for the last sand to fall so that her life might be claimed. What is ironic about this in comparison to “venus with a Mirror” is that the Goddess of Love is immortal and her beauty and life far surpasses the “mortality” of the woman in Hans Baldung Grien’s painting. Venus will be beautiful forever. She does not have to worry about aging or death which, I believe, gives Grien’s painting a more significant meaning behind it.
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