The evil earth spider also features in another triptych in our Japanese print collection. This woodblock colour print is from a ghost series, Beauty and Valour in the Novel Suikoden' by the designer Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, dating to the Edo Period. There is, however, ambiguity in the sources and it’s unclear if tsuchigumo was first used to refer to people or the monster. 'Tsuchigumo' has also referred to certain groups of people in ancient Japan, such as bandits and resistant leaders, who used guerrilla tactics. Many of these groups lived in hollow earthen mounds and may have used caves as hideouts. The tsuchigumo creature is basically a giant spider, though it is sometimes described as having the face of a demon and the body of a tiger. Here, the earth spider transfers magical powers to Prince Kurokumo to help him plot revenge on his enemy, the 10th-century warrior Minamoto no Yorimitsu (also known as Raikō). There are several Japanese legends surrounding the evil 'earth spider' or 'tsuchigumo'. On display in the Arts of the Renaissance, Rings Gallery, 56, 2nd floor. The collection was given to the Museum with the aim to help us become ‘an institution of the first importance for teaching and illustrating the development of art applied to both small and larger objects’. It's one of the remarkable collection of over 800 rings, also by C.D.E. Fortnum in honour of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The ring was presented to the Museum by C.D.E. These would have sparkled and flashed in the light, drawing attention to the ring’s macabre message. This is the finest memento mori ring in the Ashmolean’s collection. Diamonds are set in the skull’s eye sockets and nose, and in the crossbones. The prospect of death served to emphasise the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly pleasures, luxuries and achievements. Memento mori rings (from the Latin ‘remember that you must die’) reminded the wearer of the brevity of life, and the need to prepare for death and the afterlife. View the print in the Western Art Print Roomĭeath from disease, famine or war was an ever-present reality in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was presented by him to the Ruskin Drawing School and is now in the Ashmolean's print collection. John Ruskin used the engraving to make both moral and practical points in his teachings. Dürer was probably influenced by the writings of his friend, the humanist philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam.Īlthough the anatomical details distinguish the engraving as a masterpiece of naturalistic observation, it's arguably the fantastic elements that give the picture its power. It's a finely-executed depiction of calm, steely resistance to evil and mortality. A lizard lies beneath the horse's feet, and a skull sits on the tree-stump in the bottom left corner. The Devil is on the right, behind the knight's horse, in the form of a grotesque animal. In this large, allegorical engraving by the German printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), we see a mounted knight in the foreground, while Death rides beside him clutching an hourglass.
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