Modern artists have displayed considerable ingenuity in the use of the skeleton, but the results have necessarily only succeeded in degrading the art. Rethel figures a skeleton in the costume of a monk who is ringing a bell at a dance.[a] Several of the dancers have fallen dead, apparently from plague, and the whole scene is ghastly. Henneberg has a Fortune allegory in which Death is about to seize a horseman who is chasing a nude woman,[b] this design being a slight modification of a variety of prints executed in the sixteenth century. Thoma uses a skeleton in a most bizarre manner. He substitutes it for the serpent in a picture of Adam and Eve,[c] and in another work associates it with Cupid.[d] Two lovers are talking, and Death stands behind the woman whose hat Cupid is lifting. A terrible picture with a political bearing was painted by Uhde.[e] It represents a crowd of revolutionists rushing towards a bridge, while a skeleton in modern costume waves a sword and cheers them on. These instances suffice to indicate the difficulty in the production of a fine work of art with so hideous a form as a skeleton thrown into prominence. [a] Death at a Masked Ball. [b] Race for Fortune. [c] Sin and Death. [d] Cupid and Death. [e] Revenge. How simply one may avoid the introduction of a skeleton in a design concerned with death, is shown by an example where three artists deal with the same motive--Death, the Friend. The first composition shows an old man sitting dead in a chair while a skeleton costumed as a monk, tolls a bell[a]: in the second there is also an old man in a chair, but an Angel with a scythe is substituted for the skeleton[b]: in the third an Angel with huge folded wings forming an oval framework for her figure, leans over the body of a child which has its face hidden.[c] The second design is a vast improvement over the first, but the third is incomparably the best of the three. It may be remarked that a scythe is too trivial an emblem for the Angel of Death, for whom indeed an emblem of any kind is only admissible when Death is represented as the result of eternal justice, in which case a flaming sword is appropriate. [a] Woodcut by A. Rethel. [b] Lithograph by O. Redon. [c] Painting by G. F. Watts.