Mercenaries and a Woman with Death in a Tree (1524): Art, History and Details

Mercenaries and a Woman with Death in a Tree (1524) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Urs Graf the Elder (Swiss, c. 1485–1527/29).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Two Swiss mercenaries and a woman meet outside a city at a prominent tree. The woman’s immodest dress, glance, and proximity to a money bag imply that she is sexually available, as does the soldier’s suggestively placed sword. Death makes an appearance as a skeleton, conjoining sin with death (for it was believed that overindulgence in carnal love led to peril). The Swiss Confederacy during the 1500s was a culture of mercenary warfare. Women traveled with regiments of soldiers, earning meager wages as servants, cooks, or sex workers. Urs Graf, a soldier himself, made many images ridiculing the situation.

Object facts

• Title: Mercenaries and a Woman with Death in a Tree
• Date: 1524
• Creator attribution: Urs Graf the Elder (Swiss, c. 1485–1527/29)
• Culture: Switzerland
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Dimensions: Image: 20.2 x 11.7 cm (7 15/16 x 4 5/8 in.); Sheet: 20.2 x 11.7 cm (7 15/16 x 4 5/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1942.118

A detail from the museum

Urs Graf was a Swiss professional soldier, or mercenary, who made many images of soldiers and camp followers, such as the woman featured here.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Richards, Louise. "Two Woodcuts." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. (April 1957): 63-67.
• Draiflessen Collection. Storytelling : Die ErzäHlerische Kraft Der Druckgrafik. Mettingen: Draiflessen Collection, 2023.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.