Image of Death (Imago Mortis), from the Nuremberg Chronicle

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

This brightly colored leaf from The Nuremberg Chronicle shows five cheerful skeletons and decaying cadavers dancing, playing music, and emerging from a grave. One tosses its bluish entrails about like a dress train, while others rattle dry bones. Fingerprints appear on the right side of this evidently well-thumbed page. A user also bracketed the text below that begins, “Nothing is better than death,” underscoring the importance of the memento mori (Remember you must die) message offered by the work. The Nuremberg Chronicle was also available uncolored, in black and white.

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