Life stairs
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Cornelis_Anthonisz._-_Steps_of_Life_%28ca._1550%29.jpg/220px-Cornelis_Anthonisz._-_Steps_of_Life_%28ca._1550%29.jpg)
Life stairs , also called age levels or age levels , are - mostly drawn - representations of the course of human life.
description
Life stairs were very popular from the 17th century. Based on the seventh year of life ( Hebdomads ) introduced by Solon , the human life course was mostly divided and presented in ten stages of ten years each. In many cases, the climax of life was set at the fifth decade, as it was assumed that at this age man “comes closest to perfection”. Before the course of life was represented in the form of stairs, circles, wheels and trees were the usual symbolism in art. This form then changed more and more into a linear process. The first secured representations date from 1540 by Jörg Breu the Younger and Cornelis Anthonisz. In the course of the following centuries the motifs and representations changed constantly. The first depictions of life stairs were initially strongly religious and were increasingly replaced by motifs from everyday life. Life stairs were painted for both sexes. The life stairs had their heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries. With the beginning of the First World War until after the end of the Second World War , these representations largely disappeared.
A well-known painter of stairs to life was Fridolin Leiber .
See also
literature
- Josef Ehmer : Life stairs (PDF; 180 kB) . In: Encyclopedia of Modern Times . Edited by Friedrich Jaeger. Vol. 7. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, Sp. 50-55.
- Peter Joerißen, Cornelia Will: The stairs of life. Images of the human ages. Municipal Museum Haus Koekkoek, Kleve. Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne / Habelt, Bonn 1983 (= publications of the Rheinisches Museumamt 23), ISBN 3-7927-0762-4 .
- Christian Marchetti: Turning thirty. Ethnographic explorations at an age threshold. TVV, Tübingen 2005 (= studies and materials of the Ludwig-Uhland-Institute of the University of Tübingen 28), chapter Life Pictures , p. 61 ff. (PDF; 1.1 MB) ( Memento of March 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
- Stefan Ruppert : Age and Law. In: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History , Frankfurt am Main: Research Report 2009.