Snapshots of the Past

[La calavera infernal] – Historic Reproduction

[La calavera infernal], [no date recorded on caption card] — antique engraving
[La calavera infernal], [no date recorded on caption card]. Antique engraving from the Historic Print Archive collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

[La calavera infernal] comes to life in this antique engraving, reproduced from the original with every detail intact. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

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[La calavera infernal]

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*La calavera infernal*, whose title translates roughly as "the infernal skull," is recorded as a metal engraving and is listed in *Posada's Mexico*, a 1979 book that points to the printmaker José Guadalupe Posada as its source. Posada worked in Mexico in the late 1800s and early 1900s, producing cheap broadsheets that used skeletons, or calaveras, to satirize politicians, the wealthy and everyday vanity. His skull figures drew on a long Mexican habit of treating death as a familiar companion rather than a fearsome end, a tradition later closely tied to Día de Muertos. The record gives no firm date, so the print is best understood through that wider social and artistic setting.

Created / published[no date recorded on caption card]
Medium1 print : metal engraving.
NotesIllus. in: Posada's Mexico, ed. by Ron Tyler, 1979, p. 621, #175. Image credited to The Embassy of Mexico, Washington, D.C. This record contains unverified, data from old caption card and book.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,127 × 1,536 px · prints to 4 × 5 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-144676

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