Inspired through his stage designs and costumes for Igor Strawinsky's opera "The rakes progress" at the Salzburg Festival in 1994, Jörg Immendorff was occupied with the late-baroque picture series of the same name by William Hogarth over the following years. This led him to the vanitas theme "Den Hahn wecken" (Waking the Rooster). In this sheet Immendorff effectively commemorates baroque symbolism: A naked man, dead or just asleep, reclined on a pile of straw, representing the cut straws of life in 17th and 18th century imagery. Hourglass and skull increase the reference, which colludes with a view on the morning sun breaking through the dark night. With so much Christian symbolism of death and redemption, a hidden provocative notion may not be missing: The naked man calls reminiscene of a dead, perspectively distorted image of Christ from Andrea Mantegna's iconic Milan "Lamentation of Christ" - a subtle break that delivers proof of Immendorff's creative quality.