Five Schools, Built to Deepen · Posada — Broadsides & Calaveras
Cupid's Skeleton (La Calavera de Cupido)
José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) · Published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo (1852–1917), 1900
What it is
A photo-relief and letterpress broadside by José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), printing Cupid as a calavera — a skeleton drawing his bow — on buff paper. The Metropolitan Museum dates the sheet circa 1900–1910 and names Antonio Vanegas Arroyo as its publisher.
Why it matters
Posada cut calaveras by the thousand for Mexico City's penny press, and Vanegas Arroyo pushed them into the street as cheap, disposable sheets. Here the target is romance itself: the argument is that love and death wear the same skull, a conceit Posada reworked again and again for a mass audience that read its news and its jokes in bone.
What to notice
The warm buff stock softens nothing — the skeleton still grins as it aims the arrow, the joke sitting entirely in the bare bone.
The arrow of love and the arrow of death, drawn by the same hand.
Provenance
- School
- Posada — Broadsides & Calaveras (Various)
- Designer
- José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913)
- Format
- Broadside
- Poster published
- Published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo (1852–1917), 1900
- Source
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · 46.46.308
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
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