This is the third post in the 10 scariest paintings about death and with the word in its title. But that doesn’t surprise you, does it? Death is our foremost primal fear, along with the fear of the unknown in general. It is a part of life just as birth is, yet we agonize over its cruel selection of our friends and loved ones.
As agonizing as it is, the battle is a futile one as is clear in Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “Triumph of Death” (detail above). Similar to Bruegel’s other display of demise, Mad Meg, and reminiscent of the terrors of Hieronymus Bosch, “Triumph” is a spectacle of horror with Death not only lurking around every corner but dominating every square inch of the landscape.
All walks of life from Prince to pauper are tortured, tormented, harassed and murdered by ungodly skeletons. Armies of the bony villains abound to drown, hang, bludgeon, stab, lacerate, and decapitate their wailing victims with scythes, swords, clubs and any other implement of horror. Nets of people are cast into the murky water to drown; a skeleton slits the throat of a bound unfortunate soul, while a dog eats the face off a dying woman nearby.
Off in the distance, the sea is littered with the sinking ships of refugees who attempt, in vain, to flee the massacre. Smoke covers the horizon, and bellows from the burning cities and villages. The flames can be seen for miles.
The tortured are left on the cartwheels which dot the landscape to be eaten by birds. This is a view of commonplace torture methods of the time, where one is “broken on the wheel” and the remains, sometimes still alive, are hoist on a pole for scavengers to feast.
A skeleton waits over the dying king with an hourglass as a cart of skulls slowly rides past, crushing people to death as the wheels turn. The driver rings a bell, the death knell, signaling the defeat of mankind. This fight is over. The battle is lost to the hordes of death minions who have spread over the world like apocalyptic parasites, to mercilessly and without reason or remorse, slaughter humanity into oblivion.
Interpret this fright show as you will. Historians say that it might be a representation of the political climate of 16th century Europe before the “80 Years War.” A more pessimistic view is shown with the antagonists being armies of skeletons, or dead people, rather than otherworldly demons or hellions as seen in Bosch’s doom warnings. This could be Brueghel didn’t want to show anything from Heaven or Hell, but simply to show the end of humankind into the void. Maybe Brueghel was just in a bad mood when he painted this.
However you interpret it, we can agree this village has seen better days.
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