Girl with Dead Bird

The portrait we have come to call Little Girl with Dead Bird is an enigma. On the one hand we hardly know anything about this sixteenth-century masterpiece. But even so on the other hand the picture fascinates viewers to this day. This painting's indeterminate yet compelling status provides Volkmar Mühleis grounds to look beyond its historical significance and to explore its anthropological scope as well from an intercultural perspective and moreover against the backdrop of its complex of themes concerning life and death. To do so Mühleis returns to the conceptual premises that frame the relationship between the history of art and the anthropology of images along with those that juxtapose Western and Eastern philosophies.