愛藝

Snakes is a woodcut print （49.8 cm × 44.7 cm） by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher， first printed in July 1969.

It depicts a disc made up of interlocking1 circles that grow progressively smaller towards the center and towards the edge. There are three snakes laced2 through the edge of the disc.

Snakes has rotational symmetry3 of order 3， comprising a single wedge-shaped image repeated three times in a circle. The image is printed in three colours： green， brown and black. In several earlier works Escher explored the limits of infinitesimal size and infinite number， for example the Circle Limit series， by actually carrying through the rendering of smaller and smaller figures to the smallest possible sizes. By contrast， in Snakes， the infinite diminution of size—and infinite increase in number—is only suggested in the finished work.

This was Escher’s last print.

《蛇》是荷蘭畫家M.C.埃舍爾創(chuàng)作的一幅木刻版畫（49.8厘米×44.7厘米），首印于1969年7月。

該畫描繪了一個(gè)由環(huán)環(huán)相扣的小圓環(huán)組成的大圓盤，這些圓環(huán)向圓盤中心和邊緣延展時(shí)逐漸變小。有三條蛇穿繞在圓盤邊緣。

《蛇》為三階旋轉(zhuǎn)對稱圖案，單個(gè)楔形圖像在一個(gè)圓內(nèi)重復(fù)了三次。圖像為三色印刷，分別是綠色、棕色和黑色。在早期的若干作品比如《圓極限》系列版畫中，通過實(shí)際創(chuàng)作時(shí)將越來越小的圖像繪制得盡可能小，埃舍爾探索了描繪無限小尺寸和無限大數(shù)目的極限。相比而言，在《蛇》中，尺寸的無限縮小——和數(shù)目的無限增大——只在成畫中有所體現(xiàn)。

這是埃舍爾最后一幅版畫作品。