Selfportrait with Death Playing the Fiddle

Narrator:

Can death inspire us?

Memento mori, the Latin for “remember (that you have) to die”, and is the use of symbolic references to act as a reminder of the inevitability of death.

In medieval art, death was often depicted as a living skeleton. Sometimes with people dancing or playing horns, or drums.

Death was seen as something common and unifying in society, because in the face of death, we were all equal, and all classes of society participated in the dance of death...

In the Swiss artist, Arnold Böcklin's self-portrait from 1872, however, he faces death alone...

We see that he’s attentively stopped his work, while he listens to death playing the fiddle.

His facial expression doesn’t show fear, but curiosity...

Böcklin is one of those who gave the medieval 'dance of death' a modern form.

His self-portrait saw death as a companion and inspired a number of artists to embrace life precisely because we are going to die.

Afterall – as discussed in PAN magazine following its purchase by Nationalgalerie Berlin – death cannot be defeated anyway, so why not embrace it...?

In other words – Memento vivere – remember to live!