A young woman in a fur-trimmed dress and a crown looks down and to the side. Behind her, a wild man, a hairy figure from German folklore, wraps an arm around her. Between them stands a shield with a skull on it, topped by a helmet and a great spray of feathered wings and swirling leaves. Albrecht Dürer's monogram sits on a small tablet at the bottom edge.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the engraving to 1503 and reads it as a memento mori with a twist. The crown suggests she is a bride. The wild man, who symbolizes lust and untamed nature, is often present in images of courtship, but his shield, which she cannot see, shows him to be a stand-in for Death. The angle of the skull on the shield matches the angle of her head. Love, the print says, is real, and so is its end.
It is also a showcase for what Dürer could do with a burin. The polished metal of the helmet, the feathers of the wings, the pleats of the dress and the rough hair of the wild man each get their own texture, and the Met calls it one of his early graphic masterpieces.
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