Wolfgang Hugo Rheinhold Bronze Sculpture Monkey With Skull

With his sculpture "Monkey with Skull," created around 1892-93, the philosopher and sculptor Wolfgang Hugo Rheinhold (1853-1900) gave the debate surrounding Charles Darwin's work an almost iconographic form. Even his contemporaries attested that, with his various allusions, he had created a "masterpiece of superior humor." Indeed, not only Shakespeare's "to be or not to be," but also Rodin's "Thinker" and the circulating caricatures of Darwin shine through. But Rheinhold's monkey is much more than just cast bronze humor from the time of our ancestors. Indeed, the monkey brandishing a tool for measuring skulls sits not only on Darwin's groundbreaking work, but also on the Bible. On closer inspection, the inscription turns out to be the key to the allegory: "Eritis sicut deus," meaning "You will be like God." With these words, the devil lures Adam and Eve to the Tree of Knowledge, which, as we know, leads to their expulsion from Paradise. Ultimately, the sculptor Rheinhold once again reveals himself to be a philosopher: The "monkey with the skull" tells us that those who seek knowledge must suffer the consequences. This is one of the fundamental experiments of the 20th century, if not "the," from the atomic bomb to genetic engineering. Font: Ars Mundi Editions.