Pyramid of Skulls

Four human skulls stacked into a pyramid, pressed so close to us that they almost push out of the canvas. In his last years Cezanne turned his quiet still-life method on death itself, and reportedly exclaimed how beautiful a skull is to paint.

The story behind the painting

Working in isolation in the last decade of his life, Cezanne often wrote about mortality, saying that life had become deathly monotonous and that he was old and would not have time to express himself. The death of his mother on 25 October 1897, who had been a protective and supportive presence, may have hastened these thoughts, and his own health began to fail at the same time. Between 1898 and 1905 he painted a number of still lifes of skulls in oil and watercolour. The source dates this canvas to about 1901, while Wikidata gives 1899.

What to look for

Four skulls are piled in a pyramid, lit by a pale light against a dark background, and placed very close to the viewer. The canvas is small, about 39 by 46.5 cm. The skulls face us straight on, and the sources compare them with Cezanne's self-portraits: in both, the round dome of the head and the eye sockets hold the attention, while the lower part is hidden, by a beard in the portraits and by the missing lower jaws here. His friend Joachim Gasquet remembered a heap of bony brainpans to which the eyeholes added a bluish note.

Meaning and intent

The skull is the old vanitas reminder of death, and Cezanne gave it a quieter, more subtle form. Yet the sources also suggest he was drawn to the skulls' volumes, just as he was to fruit and vases. He was a devout Catholic, skulls were common in Catholic homes and in artists' studios, and his own mantelpiece held three skulls near an ivory Christ on an ebony cross. Gasquet recalled him reciting a quatrain by Verlaine one evening along the Arc river, about how in this weary world the only laughter that still makes sense is that of death's heads.

Legacy

The picture was painted in Cezanne's studio in Aix before he moved to his new Les Lauves studio in September 1902. A visitor in July 1902 saw three polished skulls facing one another on a table in his bedroom, and Cezanne spoke of a good painted study in the attic, but could not find the key and blamed his maid. A similar watercolour, Three Skulls, is in the Art Institute of Chicago. The historian Francoise Cachin wrote that these bony faces all but assault the viewer, and the skull studies later inspired Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.