Eduard von Grützner: The Seven Deadly Sins

A regular visitor to this website sent these photos to me a year ago and asked if I could identify them.

At first I had to answer in the negative, but fortunately Google is getting better and better. The pictures turn out to be by Eduard von Grützner (1846 - 1925).

Grützner was born in 1846 in Upper Silesia in Prussia; an area that is now part of Poland. In 1864 he moved to Munich, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Grützner was a genre painter. He painted pictures from the world of theatre, but especially pictures of well-fed people with a glass of wine or a mug of beer in their hands. He created countless paintings of Shakespeare's Falstaff, and even more of happy monks with raised glasses.

The picture on the right was copied by other painters (e.g. Max Schmidt), but the original is usually attributed to Grützner. Grützner himself painted at least 2 copies that were almost identical, and dozens of others along the same theme. In Denmark we know it from Carlsberg's advertisements, but the story is a bit uncertain, because Carlsberg actually uses two different versions of the painting, and neither of these are exactly the same as Grützner's (in order to tell them apart, the easiest way is to look at the bricks in the vault)

The Seven Deadly Sins

There are seven pictures in the series, which are Grützner's interpretation of The Seven Deadly Sins. Strictly speaking, this is not a dance of death - at least not in the old tradition, where Death dances with representatives of the entire society in a long chain dance.

But ever since Holbein created his Dance of Death, most artists have followed this new paradigm, where a series of independent scenes show how Death appears in the everyday lives of his victims. Therefore, one may — in the clear light of hindsight — wonder that no one else has thought of combining deadly sins with the dance of death. As Fritz Ostini writes in his biography of Grützner:

The idea of combining an allegorical depiction of the seven deadly sins with a new variation of the dance of death motif is so fortunate and at the same time so obvious that one might be surprised that someone had not come up with the idea before. It is an idea that could have tempted a humorist like Grützner to give the humor of horror its due for once.(1)

In Grützner's version Death is dressed as a pretty little maid, and stares with his empty eye sockets into the face of the elderly lady, whose eyebrows he is in the process of painting.

The next sin, Greed, also reminds us a bit of Holbein. Death comes like a burglar to the miser in his cellar. But where Holbein was content to let Death steal the miser's money, Grützner's scene is more violent. Death presses down the heavy coffin lid and catches the miser's head.

The third,(2) Lust, shows how Death is dressed as an elderly procuress, Death draws the curtain on a love bed, which a naked young woman is about to climb into with her lover.

Grützner produced many pictures from the world of theatre, and he was particularly fond of painting Mephistopheles from Goethe's "Faust".

Envy is reminscent of a certain scene from Faust. Death has taken over the red clothes in the role of Mephistopheles. Death has received a rich harvest of laurels and is carrying his wreaths, on which is written "To the greatest artist".

The actors in the roles of Margarethe and Faust look on enviously, while the director in the background applauds "The Greatest Artist".

Grützner has produced many — even hundreds — paintings of cheerful, well-nourished men enjoying beer and wine. But there are apparently limits to Gluttony.

As in Holbein's woodcut of the drunkards, Death serves a man who is in the process of eating and drinking himself to death. An apoplectic glutton in front of a richly laden table, overheated and overworked, the blood vessels of his skull strained to bursting, so that he can hardly open his eyes. One more glass - and the long-deserved stroke will put an end to this life of luxury!

Death pours the last glass with a servile smile. You can almost hear John Cleese trying to tempt Mr. Creosote: "And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint".

Wrath is represented by a burly mountain logger. He has drawn his knife to stab his opponent in a fierce fight, while Death, his evil demon, has already drawn his scythe: The hot-tempered person will also pay for his actions with his life.

Finally, Sloth: A fat epicurean in a dressing gown, suffocating in his own fat. He lies dozing in his armchair with a stupid expression on his face, with his equally stuffed pug on his lap. Behind the back of the chair stands Death, fanning him with a cool breath: "Sleep, sleep sweetly. Your sleep will be deep and long enough!"

The missing link

So with the help of Google we have managed to identify the artist and to find the beautiful color sketches. But the sketches are just that: sketches, and if you look at the black and white photos, there are far more details and many differences.

For example: Is the large mirror/painting on the wall placed in the center of the picture or to the left? Are there one or two bottles in the wine cooler? Is the dog sleeping or awake? Is the tablecloth covering the table leg?

The photographs are therefore images of finished paintings. The strange thing is that the sketches appear in several books about Grützner, but the finished paintings do not seem to be found.

The seven deadly sins by Eduard von Grützner

External links

Further information

Translated from "Grützner, mit Porträt, 104 Abbildungen […]", page 102.

Die Idee, mit einer allegorischen Darstellung der sieben Todsünden zugleich eine neue Variation des Totentanzmotives zu verbinden, ist so glücklich und zugleich eigentlich so naheliegend, daß man sich wundern mag, wenn nicht ein Früherer schon auf den Einfall gestoßen ist. Es ist so recht ein Einfall, der einen Humoristen, wie Grützner, reizen konnte, einmal auch dem Humor des Grausens sein Recht zu geben.

See the external link.

This is not the sequence used by English Wikipedia, but I follow the SALIGIA rule: Superbia, Avaritia, Luxuria, Invidia, Gula, Ira and Acedia.