Presented at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition of 1905, Franz Stassen depicts The Ages of Life in a sunny, paradisiacal summer landscape, with dancing putti and nude horsemen in the background.
Before a laurel grove, Jupiter sits enthroned in a purple tunic, holding in his right hand a crystal ball, a symbol of his clairvoyance.
At his feet springs the fountain of life, surrounded by dark-haired youths garlanded in roses, and to the right, a young mother with her sons, promising the future.
However, Jupiter's attention is drawn to the three nude youths reflected in the crystal ball.
The first, crowned with ivy, is reminiscent of Paris holding the apple of discord that would ignite the Trojan War. He stands before the helmeted youth, leaning on a shield adorned with Medusa's head, holding his spear—a figure of Mars, god of war. Fiery, young, yet cunning and strategic, he represents youth and the struggle for life.
Cuddled against him is his battle-lover, the one who, like in Sparta, never leaves his side, forming a pair bound together in battle as in death.
This youth, full of beauty, mental and physical strength, is the obverse of a coin, or old age is its reverse. Aged figures cast a final, nostalgic glance back at youth before symbolically stepping out of the image.
Educated at the Berlin University of the Arts, Stassen worked in the German Jugendstil tradition, inspired by artists such as Gustav Klimt and other Symbolist painters, and especially Max Klinger (1857-1920) with his monumental and unorthodox depiction of Christ on Olympus, 1890/97, now in the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts, measuring 9 meters by 5 meters.
Comprising nude figures, it represents Christ and the four cardinal virtues appearing before Zeus and the Olympian gods.
Zeus reappears eight years later in The Ages of Life.
A long line of German writers, including Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and most notably Nietzsche, saw in this work Christianity as a “deadly” religion that had destroyed the natural sensuality and love of life characteristic of the Ancients. Like many intellectuals of the time,
Klinger's work, like Stassen's, reflects the idea of an association between classical antiquity and sexual freedom, an idea widely shared by many German Symbolist artists at the end of the century. Through this theme, these artists sought to break free from the moral and aesthetic conventions of their time.
This is what brings Stassen and Klinger together at the turn of the century.
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