The Seven Ages of Woman

Baldung's Seven Ages of Woman from 1544 is one of his last major works, depicting female life from infancy through old age and death in the allegorical tradition of the ages of man. The subject — the female body transformed by time from childhood beauty through adult maturity to aged decay and death — was one Baldung had engaged with throughout his career through his representations of Eve, witches, and death-and-maiden subjects. This late work distills his lifelong preoccupation with the female body as a vehicle for meditating on time, mortality, and the terrible truth of physical change. Painted when he was around sixty, it represents a final meditation on themes he had explored from his earliest works.

The seven female figures arranged in sequence create a compelling visual narrative, with Baldung's precise technique documenting the progressive effects of aging with characteristic unflinching realism.