Danse Macabre

The danse macabre, or "dance of death," is an artistic genre from the late medieval period meant to illustrate the inevitability of death. The images found in danse macabre artwork featured a group of skeletons or decomposing corpses leading the living in a procession, or dance, to their graves. The living figures represented people of all walks of life, from emperors and popes to children and peasants—a reminder that death will eventually claim everyone, no matter his or her social status. The genre is believed to have originated in thirteenth-century poetry but made a more lasting impression in artwork following a deadly plague in the mid-fourteenth century. The danse macabre became prominent throughout the European art of the period and helped inspire the modern image of death as the skeletal Grim Reaper.

Background

One of the possible earliest human representations of death dates from about 7500 BCE and was discovered at the Mesolithic archaeological site of Catal Huyuk in modern-day Turkey. Painted images of black vulture-like figures standing over headless human figures may be symbolic of death removing a soul from the body. The Greeks personified death as a young, handsome figure named Thanatos, twin brother of the god of sleep, Hypnos. Thanatos was responsible for accompanying the souls of the dead to the underworld where he would turn them over to Charon, the ferryman of the River Styx. To the ancient Hebrews, death took the form of a winged angel named Azrael who removed the soul from a body at the moment of death. This concept was later adopted by the Christians and Muslims and led to the figure known as the Angel of Death.

Many early representations of death portrayed it as an indifferent or even benign force performing the will of a higher deity. The image of death took on more sinister overtones in the mid-fourteenth century as Europe suffered through a devastating epidemic known as the Black Death. The outbreak of bubonic plague began in Italy in 1347 and in the span of a few years killed an estimated twenty-five million people—about a third of Europe's total population. The event left deep scars on the psyche of the survivors, and in the years after the plague, artwork began to portray death as a menacing skeletal figure holding a weapon such as a crossbow or spear. Over time, death's weapon changed to a curved scythe with which he cut down multiple souls at once, like a farmer harvesting stalks of grain.

Overview

The danse macabre motif was based on the medieval theme of memento mori, Latin for "remember that you must die." Its exact origins are unknown, but some researchers believe it may have been inspired by a thirteenth-century French poem called "Vado Mori" (I prepare myself to die). In the poem, members of several classes of medieval society complain about their imminent deaths and lament the certainty of it. Another possible inspiration was the tale of the "Three Living and the Three Dead," also thought to date from the thirteenth century. In this tale, three young noblemen encounter three corpses while hunting in the woods. The corpses lecture the terrified men, telling them, "Such as I was you are, and such as I am you will be."

The earliest known representation of the danse macabre motif came from poetry written around 1376 to 1400, several decades after the Black Death. The oldest known visual representation of the concept was painted around 1425 on a wall of a building in the Cimetière des Innocents, the largest cemetery in the city of Paris. The artwork featured a series of sections, beginning with an introduction by a narrator. It was followed by four skeletal musicians playing instruments as decomposing figures led thirty living people along in a procession of death. The first living figures were religious and secular leaders such as the pope, king, archbishop, and cardinal. They were followed by other figures from lower social statuses including the doctor, merchant, monk, hermit, and child. The images were accompanied by verses in which the living begged for mercy while death responded with sarcasm or insults. Death told the priest that he would never be pope, taunted the chubby abbot that he would be the first to rot, and mocked the doctor for being unable to cure himself. In the end, the king of death came for the narrator.

The mural was destroyed around 1699, but it was recorded and reproduced in other artwork. It also inspired several other danse macabre murals across Europe. Some of the most well-known were at Old St. Paul's Cathedral in London and St. Mary's Church in the German city of Lübeck. While the Cimetière des Innocents mural featured only male figures, other examples included women such as a new bride or shepherdess. The number of figures also varied. Most representations of the motif were painted on the walls of churches, monasteries, or family crypts. In some cases, they were recorded in manuscripts or books. The concept was also used in morality plays warning the living of death's unceasing presence and advising them to prepare for its arrival. In the 1530s, German artist Hans Holbein began using the imagery from these plays to create a series of danse macabre woodcuts.

The genre remained popular until the later Renaissance when its style was sometimes disparaged as reflecting a more barbaric time. Despite falling out of favor, the art form did not disappear. Danse macabre imagery persisted for centuries and is still seen in the modern era. Nineteenth-century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt used the subject as inspiration for his symphonic piece Totentanz, German for "dance of death." One of the more famous depictions of the danse macabre can be found in Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. In the 1957 film, a knight from the era of the bubonic plague attempts to stall death by playing a game of chess against him. The knight is ultimately unsuccessful, and the film ends with death leading the knight and his companions away in a dance of death.

Bibliography

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