Potraying the Dead

William IV, Duke of Bavaria, by Hans Muelich. (33 by 25 cm). Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.

"This picture... shows a face distorted by agony as of a drowning man emerging from the wave-like folds of pillow and blanket.  The painful asymmetry of the open right eye and the closed left eye, of the sunken right cheek and the oedematous left cheek, the spoon-like protrusion of the lower lip are a mockery of all princely dignity.  Such ruthlessly realistic representation, instinct with deliberate horror, is surely without a parallel in the pictorial art of the whole western world;  hence this small painting belongs at least as much to the domain of forensic medicine as to the history of art.  We must point out, incidentally, that, according to a belief prevalent among practically all peoples of Europe, the open eye and mouth are an indication of the dead person expecting somebody, hence of an early death among the relatives."

From Anton Pigler's "Portraying the Dead: Graphic Art" which appeared in Acta Historiae Artium: Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. IV; Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Budapest, 1956; picture: pg. 10; text: pg. 11-12.