Envisioning Age Distinctions in Eighteenth-Century Prints

Abstract

The essay investigates how eighteenth-century prints on the stages of life implement an iconography that constructs and visualizes age distinctions. Focusing on representations of old age and childhood, I trace the development from a circular model expressing continuity to a linear gradation accentuating differences between the “ages,” which can be related to new modes of production emerging in a middle-class society. That these distinctions between the stages of life are considered essential for the balance of society is finally exemplified in satirical prints contrasting old age and childhood in order to reject the blurring of the borderlines of age-specific identities.