Sterne and Death: "And When Death Himself Knocked at My Door"
Thomas Patch British
Subject Laurence Sterne British, born Ireland
Not on view
Laurence Sterne here confronts Death–a skeleton holding a spent hour-glass and a crutch. The author rises from a writing table supporting a small model of the Diana of Ephesus, with books by Aristotle and Ovid, and a riding boot on the floor below. A plan of a fort on the wall refers to the character of Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy, while a machine consuming books to spit out text points to charges of plagarism aimed at the writer. In the lower margin a moth hovering over a torch symbolizes life's fragility, near quotations from Tristram Shandy included to elucidate on the image.
Patch met Sterne in Florence in the winter of 1765 and made this print close to Sterne's death, a few weeks after the publication of "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy" (1768).
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