In honour of All Hallows’ Eve, let’s take five minutes to look at how death was expressed in art in the late Middle Ages.
Of dead kings, dukes and constables: the historical context of the Danse Macabre in late medieval Paris
October 22, 2014 By
Why did the danse macabre rise to fame only when incorporated in a mural scheme that was created in a period of major political upheaval?
Call for Papers: 16th Congress of Danses Macabres d’Europe
February 5, 2014 By
The Association aims at studying Danses macabres and its related themes: the Encounter between the three living and the three dead, the Triumph of Death, Ars moriendi, futility, and eschatological themes such as the Last Judgement.
Danse Macabre’ Around the Tomb and Bones of Margaret of York
October 24, 2013 By
Over 500 years ago on 23 November 1503, at Malines, in present day Belgium, died Margaret of York, sister to Edward IV and Richard III of England and third and last wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, whom she survived by a quarter of a century.
Manifestations of the Grotesque and Carnivalesque Body in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal
August 1, 2013 By
Manifestations of the Grotesque and Carnivalesque Body in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal Brian Gourley (School of English, Queen’s University Belfast)Queen’s University Belfast, Quest, Vol.1 (2006) Abstract Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) remains arguably his best-known work. If one talks of the existence of a genre of medieval film, and subsequently, the […]
The Dance of the Black Death
August 17, 2012 By
‘One by one, we become the mistress of Death. Extending his bony grip, he pulls us into his fleshless, decayed frame and begins whirling us around in a morbid dance of fatal seduction. We are Death’s partner in the danse macabre.’
“What We Are, So You Shall Be”: Preparation for Death in the Late Middle Ages
March 25, 2012 By
It is tempting to explain the late medieval attitude toward death as a direct result of the Black Death, which caused massive loss of life and brought about a new awareness of the fact that death could come at any time. While this generalization is not completely false, there are several issues of timing. The fear of sudden death was not new.
Dancing with the Dance of the Dead : cemetery of the Innocents and the ramifications of the Macabre
January 10, 2012 By
Glaring at us from the pages of illuminated manuscripts, royal sepulchers, and frescoes of Late Medieval churches and cemeteries, macabre cadavers, with their gaping, vermin-infested torsos, emaciated bodies, and grimacing faces, shock and repel.
A New Vision of Death: Re-Evaluating Huizinga’s Views on the Late Medieval Macabre
March 19, 2011 By
The 31st Annual Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians A New Vision of Death: Re-Evaluating Huizinga’s Views on the Late Medieval Macabre Kralik, Christine (University of Toronto) Abstract In The Waning of the Middle Ages, first published in the Netherlands in 1919, Johan Huizinga explored the late medieval art of France and the Netherlands and […]
‘Among other, I, that am falle in age’: Lydgate, Plural Singularity and Fifteenth-Century Testaments
January 13, 2011 By
‘Among other, I, that am falle in age’: Lydgate, Plural Singularity and Fifteenth-Century Testaments Block, Sam Marginalia, Vol. 10 Cambridge Yearbook (2008-2009) Abstract In 1447, William Stevenes of Somerset wrote a will making ten bequests to ‘the fabric’ of religious buildings, and sixteen to clergy. Such bequests are common in fifteenth-century wills. Eber Carle Perrow suggests this […]
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