Artwork Description:
The image is this intaglio and drypoint etching is based on a detail within an 1851 engraving by Alfred Rethel, who based his visuals on Heinrich Heine’s poetry. Rethel executed the image of Death as a skeleton dressed in a hooded robe and playing a violin. The fatal cholera outbreak at the 1832 Paris Carnival acted as his inspiration. Death’s violin is constructed from the bones of dead humans. DiFalco’s intimate etching employed two zinc plates positioned on the printing press bed in a vertical diptych format. He inserted a small separation space in between the etching plates. The individual zinc plates measure three inches high by two inches wide or 7.6 cm x 5.08 cm, and the overall image size is slightly over 6.5inches high by 2 inches wide or 16.5 cm x 5.08 cm. The paper measures about eleven by nine inches, or 28 cm x 23 cm. This is the SECOND of FOUR Editions. Moreover, each edition is limited to only five prints. The First edition was printed in 2012, and has ten prints executed in silver ink on black paper. This THIRD EDITION, created in November of 2017, uses French, oil based etching ink on RivesBFK white printmaking paper. The final, or 4th, edition will be printed and published on the first full moon of January 2019. THIS ETCHING IS SOLD WITH BOTH A FRAME AND MAT. THE FRAME SIZE IS 12 INCHES HIGH BY 9 INCHES WIDE.