F Hanfstaengl, after a painting by GCR von Max, 1869

This is a print recording a lost painting by Gabriel von Max of 1869, painted in Munich. An anatomist meditates, chin in hand, on the body of a young, beautiful woman, pulling back the cloth that covers her body in order to gaze upon her. On the desk beside him are open books, a lamp, and human and animal skulls. As well as being tools of study, they function as symbols of death, as does the moth that has alighted next to the cadaver.

Gabriel Max was himself an anatomist, philosopher and naturalist as well as a painter very well known in his time for his singeries (paintings of monkeys performing human tasks). His paintings evoked the metaphysical implications of animal and human life.

The present picture could be regarded as bordering on necrophilia, and would no doubt have been condemned by the British art experts of the day, but the enormous popularity of such morbid pictures as Arnold Böcklin's 'Island of the dead' (1880) attest to the interest in pictures of such themes, however unhealthy they may be considered.