Monkey Before Skeleton (German:Affe vor Skelett) is the title of a painting by the Bohemian painter Gabriel von Max from around 1900.

As part of Max's late work, the motif of the monkey can be found in a number of other depictions, which were created from 1871 until the artist's death in 1915.

The standing rhesus monkey is positioned frontally and in close proximity to the skeleton, which the viewer in front of the painting can only see from the rear.

In the background, there are also a multitude of bound writings and loose sheets of paper on the table and shelves, which end in shadowy outlines with increasing distance and darkness of the room.

As a collector and intellectual, Gabriel von Max combined art with science in order to address issues of human ancestry and further development.

Various publications by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley and the German zoologist Ernst Haeckels serve as literary sources .

The artist wrote in a letter to his youngest son Corneille Max on September 5, 1899 : "Now the natural scientists and vivisectors are meeting in Munich - these materialists all have a lot to answer for: the miserableness of Christianity is the result.

The relationship between humans and the environment is characterized by great advances in the area of zoology and the keeping and protection of animals in the 19th century .

Gabriel von Max therefore proclaims, among other things, a closer relationship to nature and the animal world, which puts the existing hierarchical thinking of people behind, but does not inhibit scientific progress.