Spanish Chapel: Sampler (Perhaps No Life), 2001

Sampler (Perhaps No Life), a speculation on the beginning of life on Earth, stands in the Spanish Chapel above an icon of death—the tomb figure of a Salamancan knight. The window behind the sampler, opening onto space, serves as background for the vague, drifting mood of the text. A painted medallion hanging in the window, in the lower left quadrant, is based on a design by Dürer; a quotation from Dürer’s diary appears in another sampler in MADAMI’MADAM.

Photograph by Yoav Horesh