Depiction of nude women was one of Baldung Grien's favored subject matters. Particularly worthy of examination is one of his latest works probably dating from the year preceding his death, Die sieben Lebensalter des Weibes ("The Seven Ages of Woman", 1544) currently in the collection of the Leipzig Museum. Conforming to his typical style of that period, the female bodies are displayed using clear contours, striking contrasts and an integrated mixing of different artistic styles. The work shows the physical and psychological transitions through seven different periods in a woman's life, from infancy, through puberty and maturity, to old age. Although they present an erotic image, they are also somewhat serious, somber or even cold. Baldung Grien ingeniously embodies an allegory of age into his presentation of naked female bodies displayed to the audience like products in a shop window. Private nudity hence becomes a public and group exhibition whose atmosphere is an interplay of reality and illusion, esthetic beauty and melancholy. From his combination of different artistic styles and almost artificially delicate modeling of women's bodies in distinguishable ages, it is clear that Baldung Grien intends to create ideal composite styles of everlasting beauty of the female body.

When viewed in combination with the missing original right-hand panel (a copy is currently in the Rennes collection entitled Drei sterbalter und der Tod [Three Old Women and Death]), the structure of the Leipzig piece is extended from seven stages of life to a rare form showing ten stages, well known in German folk verses since the fifteenth century. The work by Baldung Grien now being considered may therefore be treated as one half of a diptych, in which case, it is a contemplation on the whole process of life and death, from youthful beauty to decline and ugliness; or, on the other hand, as a single piece since it correlates with a tradition of portraying seven age groups.

This work's complexity of both form and content means that it cannot be viewed as a simple painting of female nudes. Firstly, the composition of women of differing ages represented by the nudes suggests the traditional structure of a Lebensalter painting, yet at the same time, it is also quite different from that tradition of age paintings which tends to focus on moral teachings through pictorial metaphors. Secondly, the nudity and erotic seduction seem to subvert the values of contemporary paintings in their portrayal of women of the upper and bourgeois classes. Thirdly, the naked bodies are liberated from the constraint of clothing and the limitations of that period's fashions, allowing the presentation of an ideal of everlasting beauty and naturalism. This beautiful and eternal dream is spoilt, however, by the warning of vanitas conveyed by the age allegory. These ambiguities and the contradiction between eternal and ephemeral suggest a complexity of motive and idea behind Baldung Grien's execution of this work, making it worthy of further consideration.

This paper will explore Baldung Grien's appropriation of preexisting modes and forms from the tradition of age allegories and from published illustrations of theatrical age plays performed at Fastnachsspiel in order to identify the sources of form and structure in the Leipzig picture, as will the influences of age depiction in traditional folk verses and humanist ideas prevalent at that time. Baldung Grien's detailed description of the physiology and psychology of women of differing ages and his unique emphasis on women, more than any other artist of his era, will also be examined. Despite some development in women's rights at the time of, and also as one result of, the Reformation, misogyny did not diminish significantly and was still a prevailing social attitude affecting people's thoughts and actions. Nevertheless, this picture by Baldung Grien perhaps reflects a new image of the female body and a new ideal of beauty that arose during that turbulent period.