爱艺

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》是荷兰画家M.C.埃舍尔创作的一幅木刻版画（49.8厘米×44.7厘米），首印于1969年7月。

该画描绘了一个由环环相扣的小圆环组成的大圆盘，这些圆环向圆盘中心和边缘延展时逐渐变小。有三条蛇穿绕在圆盘边缘。

《蛇》為三阶旋转对称图案，单个楔形图像在一个圆内重复了三次。图像为三色印刷，分别是绿色、棕色和黑色。在早期的若干作品比如《圆极限》系列版画中，通过实际创作时将越来越小的图像绘制得尽可能小，埃舍尔探索了描绘无限小尺寸和无限大数目的极限。相比而言，在《蛇》中，尺寸的无限缩小——和数目的无限增大——只在成画中有所体现。

这是埃舍尔最后一幅版画作品。