Death of Orpheus (Dürer)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Death of Orpheus[1][2] (1494) is a pen and ink drawing by Albrecht Dürer. The drawing is supposedly made after a lost engraving by Andrea Mantegna. It represents Orpheus's murder committed by Thracian women, because he was the first that introduced homosexuality among Thracian men. Durer marked his "crime" in banderole, where he wrote: "Orfeus der erst puseran" (Orpheus, the first pederast, or sodomite).
The word puseran(t) derives from the Italian buggerone, which in its turn derives from Latin bulgarus from which come also the terms bugger in English and bougre in French.
Though the drawing could be taken as a Northern European reaction to sodomy, it is actually based on an original, now lost, by the Italian master Andrea Mantegna.
See also
![[1]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D%C3%BCrer_-_Mort_d%27Orph%C3%A9e_%281494%29.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cropped_version_of_D%C3%BCrer_drawing.JPG){kind=link}