Twee jongemannen ontmoeten de gemaskerde Dood op straat 1830

This lithograph, by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville presents a street scene sharply satirizing societal norms. The composition is structured around a stark contrast between the vitality of youth and the inevitability of death. Grandville uses the linearity of the figures to create an unsettling juxtaposition. The two young men, dressed in the fashion of the time, stand upright, embodying life's forward momentum. In contrast, the figure of Death, draped in a theatrical mask and garish clothing, leans out from behind a wall, disrupting the expected order. The artist’s visual language employs semiotic codes, with fashion and social interaction acting as signs of bourgeois life, while Death, adorned in a grotesque parody of these signs, embodies life’s fragility. The overall effect destabilizes the values and categories of 19th-century Parisian society, challenging our perceptions of mortality and its intrusion into everyday life.