moth to a flame
Gabriel Cornelius von Max, Der Anatom, 1869. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek München. Image via Neue Pinakothek.
An anatomist gazes at the corpse of a young woman, pulling away the cloth that covers her body. Decomposition is yet to set in, and the anatomist hesitates momentarily ahead of his autopsy. A lamp, unlit, open books and an assortment of human and animal skulls lie on the desk behind him. However, what I like most in this work is the moth at the foot of the cadaver.
Although interpretations vary across cultures and periods, moths are the dark cousins of the butterfly, generally associated with pestilence, death and omens. In Celtic literature, a moth snuffing out a candle was a sign of imminent death in the household. In France, dust from a moth's wings was thought to cause blindness.
Gabriel Cornelius von Max, Der Anatom, detail, 1869. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek München. Image via Neue Pinakothek.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, western conceptualisations of death grew increasingly taboo, and death rituals became elaborate. Meanwhile, moths took on associations with resurrection and the afterlife. Given to hovering over graves, they gave form to the souls of the dead. Gaelic traditions specifically cite a butterfly or moth flitting over a corpse as the presence of its soul.
Of course, the most metal of all moths is the Death-head hawk-moth identified by the skull-shaped form on its body. This moth produces a 'squeak', occasionally mistaken for a voice in anguish. Their scientific name, Acherontia atropos, references Atropos, the third Greek Fate who snipped the thread of life with her scissors. Acheron references one of the rivers in Hades that the souls of the dead had to pall through. The Death-head is mainly responsible for the associations between death and moths, entering popular mythologies through Dracula and, of course, as the calling card of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
While von Max's moth is relatively generic, this iconographic goldmine would not have been lost on him. He studied painting at the Prague Academy of Arts, as well as subjects as diverse as mystical traditions, philosophy, Darwinism and parapsychology, including hypnotism and spiritualism. Regarding the link between the soul and the body, Elisabeth Bronfen states,
"It was commonly believed that the hypnotised, often feminine medium, in its corpse-like state, could gain access to the realm of the dead and enter into a dialogue with the deceased….At the same time anatomists believed that opening a corpse during dissection allowed the unseen realm of the human body's interior to become visible”.[1]
Caravaggio, Saint Jerome, c.1605—06. Galleria Borghese. Image via Galleria Borghese.
Like the moth at her feet, the female corpse is a messenger. Her body falls victim to the medical gaze preoccupied with accessing the knowledge afforded by her body and the spiritualist desire to access the afterlife. The pallor of her skin starkly contrasts with the anatomists. Her pale form gives the appearance of marble, like a funerary statue atop a tomb. Ethereal light emanates from her immaculate corpse, drawing attention to the intersection of the anatomist's authority and the artist's manipulation of her body – both attempts to disarm death and the horror of the corpse.
Von Max's interest in material nature and spiritualist speculation is evident in the juxtaposition between the typical symbols of vanitas paintings (the lamp, books and skulls), the moth and the female corpse. The anatomist's pose references the trope of Saint Jerome in his study, pondering the fleeting nature of his existence. Yet, rather than meditating on a skull, the anatomist muses over the corpse of a dead woman. This painting is typical of 19th salon painting, but also a much larger (and frankly creepy) culture of depicting a beautiful, dead woman as an object.
In this painting by von Max, the corpse is wrapped neatly for the 19th-century audience. The dead woman is rendered an art object that obliterates any indication of her impending dissection and decay. Death swaddled in gossamer cloth.
[1] Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992.
