Images of the skull in art

[Posav]

Here is the creation

[Seriy]

The exhibition Picasso in Moscow demonstrates a large bronze skull of Pablo. It is truly three-dimensional, as a Möbius strip - it should all look from different angles-volume varies depending on the angle of view, it is as a sea pebble, "Chicken God" washed flow of time, change its configuration. The thing is absolutely brilliant.
The two-dimensional picture is powerless.

[Vladimir]

From the project In Situ

[Tamila]

Vattsek Hans (Hans Watzek, 1848-1903) Still Life 1898
Photographer of the Austrian group piktorialnoy photos "shamrock" (1898-1903)

[NATA NOVA]

Skull pastry (cake)

[Konstantin]

This cake? Health, especially for his birthday to someone.

[Кирилл Сызранский]

Julius LeBlanc Stewart, Julius LeBlanc Stewart (1855 - 1919).
The names of things I do not know, but the skull is there.

[Veronic]

"Among the many fears that lead to tremble, the fear of death was the weakest"

(Jacques Le Goff).

With such advanced medicine, described above, it is not surprising that the death was seen in the Middle Ages is not transcendental, it is now. But the transcendent, just ousted from the borders of the real world, for the people of the Middle Ages was the fear of death.

Europe is so accustomed to the constant presence of death around, that people simply no longer afraid of it - it was their eternal companion, from which you can not escape. She still overtake you, and probably sooner rather than later.

Theme: "Dance of Death» (La Danse Macabre), developed as a penitential literature under the influence of the preaching of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, has become an essential part of culture. This ongoing story broadside pictures and engravings in the Middle Ages was very widespread. In the engravings in various versions portrays death that resemble a dance of representatives of different sectors of society - the king, priest, peasant. This "Dance of Death at various times depicted by Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger and other artists of the Northern Renaissance. "Danse Macabre" appears on the church wall paintings of France and Germany, enters the illustration of books. Usually it is the iconographic theme, the dance of skeletons with her deceased husband, accompanied by verse commentary.
"In the galleries Danse Macabre salute in her images and poses. No other place is better suited for a monkey smirking figure of Death, that draws a pope and the emperor, a monk and a buffoon.

Читать дальше... 

... Hundred years later this exhibition funerary symbols completed a huge statue of Death, located today in the Louvre - the only thing that survived from this meeting "
(Johan Huizinga. Autumn of the Middle Ages).

On the Dance of Death "is written a lot of literature that, for all the difference approach combines one thing - the authors do not quite understand how did it come from. In "Dances" they only see "an allegory of the universality of death" and wallowing in a multilevel symbolism and religious mysteries. Mysteries, however, there is not any, if we recall that originally, in the XIV century, the images are not dancing skeleton, a corpse, a corpse, dead body with drawn ripped open his stomach. Obviously, we are dealing with creative processing cruel reality - epidemics convulsive ergotism. Separated from her real prototype, psychedelic dances St. Witt, "Danse Macabre" healed his own life. In Catalonia, in the middle of the XIV century. in a cemetery near the church "Danse Macabre" dance accompanied by the Latin song "We shall die" is not only ergotism people, but also simple believers. Shadow mysterious death hung over Europe.

"No age is not forcing people thought of death with such persistence, as XV century! Life against the backdrop of the ongoing appeal: memento mori »- wrote a distinguished historian and cultural scientist Netherlands Johan Huizinga
(Johan Huizinga, 1872 - 1945).

"Man of the Middle Ages had rejected all earthly things, has long been held up their spiritual eyes to the gloomy picture of swarming worms and pathetic dust. In the religious treatises on contempt for the world theologians have proclaimed the inevitability of hair-raising horror decomposition.
(Johan Huizinga. Autumn of the Middle Ages http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks...re/Huiz/14.php)

Barbara Tuchman in her well-designed book, "Mirror in the distance" describes the cult of death that existed in Europe in the XV century:
"Artists in the sordid details to describe the physical decay: worms, making their way through each corpse, bloated frog in closed sockets. Mocking, alluring, jubilant parade led by Death Dance of Death among the endless, frescoed walls. Rape virgins reproduced with stunning realism, in other such realistic performances of Christ's body was badly splintered guards, child or roasted and eaten by his mother. "
(Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror")

"We know that people are shocked: it rose up again and again the frightening picture of agony, and this resounding thunder threat of inevitable punishment for sin" - wrote Professor Huizinga. Benign neglect in the death and contempt for earthly life was manifested in the phenomenon of fashion in the human skull.
Historian Rat Weg struck such a custom, widespread in Europe in the 18th century:
"It's hard to imagine that a human skull was once the subject of fashion. Abnormal fashion was born in Paris in 1751. Ladies of the skull set on a dressing table, decorated it with colored ribbons, set in a burning candle, and sometimes dipped in reverent contemplation. Even Queen's was his skull, according to many, he belonged once Ninon de l'Enclos. Korolev turned to his skull like this: "Ma belle mignone".
 


But there is nothing particularly surprising here - in such an attitude toward human remains deeply rooted. Once Christ taught: "Outside the coffin seems nice, but inside he is full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matt. 23:27).
"But the Christians of his words at once and forgotten for millennia fostered a cult of worship of relics. It is known that the early Christians lived in the catacombs, surrounded by corpses.

"With reverence, speaks of this time Bishop Alexander (Mileant):
"Pagans to save the ashes of the dead were building magnificent tombs on the sides of major roads in the open field, and Christians, however, hide the body, burying them, or simply putting side by side in the caves, as it is known about the caves of Rome. This cave, dug by Christians in the rocky place to have a cemetery there. ... Some of the underground cemeteries are so large that they have 2-3 floors in height. It is here that Christians during the persecution of finding a safe haven to store the remains of the martyrs, to collect and ceremonies of worship. These are ancient cemeteries because of trapped them inputs for a long time remained unknown, and already in the late 16 century, managed to open them.
"(From the magazine" Christian reading "for 1825.)

"For the pagan culture it was unacceptable. Evnapy from Sardis in the IV century, described the desecration of Christian pagan temple of Serapis:
"They brought in a sacred place of so-called monks, who have even the human form, but .... collect bones and skulls of people found guilty of crimes and executed by court issued them for the gods and prostrate oneself before them. " This cult of the dead bodies, as well as the cult of the Eucharist, the Church has ensured that people in Europe in the 17th century, firmly believed that worn in a powder of the skull and knuckles are very good for your health.
The bones of the skeleton were examined and as a means of prevention. Good thing it was considered wearing them around the neck or sewn into clothing - not as a symbolic reminder of inevitable death, but as a prophylactic amulet. Thus, soldiers in the war wore on his knuckles were killed. From the burnt bones of happy spouses or passionate lovers were prepared exciting love potion.
(Ares F. Man in the face of death. Moscow: "Progress" - "Progress-Academy, 1992)
Well, as a decoration, human bones were used throughout Europe, not only in Paris. This is, in fact, can see any tourist traveling through Europe. You can look at the widely known ossuary in the Czech Republic and admire how cute looks like a crucified Jesus, the Sun, built of bones. Even in this church can be moved by touching the neighborhood skulls and angels.
Funny also stop in Austria, in the village of Hallstatt and visit the cellars of the church Mihaelskapelle. There can be imbued with the spectacle of lovingly stacked rows of thousands of skulls, painted under the Easter eggs.

In Spain and Portugal have a whole "dead city" - mummies on display for all to see.
In Italy, in the dungeon Capuchin monastery (1621) is known worldwide cemetery Capuchin Catacombs ", is a rather gruesome picture. There are about eight thousand mummies and embalmed corpses Palermo representatives of high society, including children and monks. The same gloomy cemetery is located in the basement of the Capuchin church of Chiesa dei Capuchins on Via Veneto in Rome. Crypt of the Capuchins in Vienna and is - a city famous all over Europe with their attention to the death and funeral.

It is interesting to compare these real cemeteries earlier paintings Vittore Carpaccio, the end of XV century. The museum in Dahlem (Berlin), we see a dead body sprawled on the background of Christ cemetery, or even a landfill, where lying and animal remains. But the bones are not scattered like stones, but form the skeletons of humans and animals, from the ground, and even similar to the mummy.
(Philip Ares. The man in the face of death)

The medieval attitude to death is presented to us much more prosaic and mundane than the current displacement of it from the mass consciousness. Then it is not only one not shocked, but it could not be perceived otherwise. If you meet with death at every moment and you realize that you can not avoid it rather embrace it triggered unconscious defense - to perceive it as a best friend who will save you from the horrors of this life (and at the same time deliberately despise).

Church has referred to the Dance of Death, stressing that little piece is playing then "Death appears not as a destructive force, but as a messenger of God, summoned people to the underworld, which is similar concept as the Bible and the ancient poets. ... The purpose of these plays was to teach people the truth about what all of them will die, and thus prepare them for the Judgement Day "
(The Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04617a.htm). Such spiritual writers of the XVII century. As Bossuet, said that they would like to open the grave to remind the living of the inevitability of death, but do not dare to do it, because nobody would make such a terrible spectacle. And yet, very close, the dead bodies had been taken out of graves and paraded, in fact, in an acceptable form of skeletons or mummies, still retained some semblance of life.
(Philip Ares. The man in the face of death).

Before this was so close to death all are equal, fear it no longer is - a reminder of the impermanence of all earthly things, the equality of all before her face. Death to unite everyone. Dr. Huizinga described the cemetery of Innocent in Paris: "The skulls and bones were piled in the tombs, which lined the surrounding space with galleries on three sides and open to reviews of thousands of people, teaching everyone a lesson of equality."

The same attitude to death manifested in such a widespread phenomenon, as the use of human skin to bind books that have not happened in the deep Middle Ages. Now about that many have forgotten, and the expression "binding of human skin" will soon associations only with propaganda tales like "shades of skin at Buchenwald," and "soap from Jews." But if you look at the infamous lampshades never will because of their absence, the prototype of the "libel" are real.
Books bound in human skin, the library is enough. Books or parchment, wrapped in human skin, appeared in the Middle Ages, when it became widely practiced tanning of human skin (and preservation of other parts of the body). These books have not survived, although there are some historical accounts about the Bible XIII-th century and the text Decretals (Catholic church law), written on human skin. Surviving same books, which are now found in libraries and museums, less than 400 years.

Initially, these were works of medicine - in the XVII-XIX centuries, physicians often ordered for his library books bound in leather people bequeathed their remains to science.
An example is found in the library of John Hay book brown - a classic work of Vesalius in anatomy «De Humanis Corporis Fabrica». If the first reliable examples antropodermicheskih covers are known from the XVII-th century, in what follows this practice increases sharply during the French Revolution. The skin of the victims of this murderous terror was often used by his supporters for binding of books (in 2003, these books illustrate the atrocities of the Jacobins, and were displayed in the museum of Nantes in France), among others bound in human skin of documents of that period - a copy of Human Rights and several copies of the French Constitution 1793

In the XIX-century kind of romance book bindings from human skin captured representations of the upper classes, and binders antropodermicheskie become almost commonplace affair. There were peculiar "aesthetes" that adorned the book binding from human skin just for beauty. In this case, skin removed, usually with a dead homeless, bribing nochlezhek administration or police. It is this kind of copy of "Dance of Death" is stored at the University of Providence. This collection of prints, published in Boston in 1892, a year later was given to the owner in the binding of a known master Josef Zaensdorfu. History has not preserved the name of the bibliophile, who, as a precondition stipulated that binding should be made of human skin, but at the disposal of the historians was a note of the Zaensdorfa, imparted to the customer that cover the skin left not one but two people. The Master was justified by the fact that the dead in shelters vagrants skin "as a rule, very poor quality. In this regard, Joseph Zaensdorf made the cover of the book "from the outer layer of skin lighter shade, and cover - of a darker skin treated with a chamois.
A frequent subject of such bindings were anatomy textbooks that doctors and medical students interlacing of the skin of the corpses, which they dissected. Sometimes used for book bindings skin of executed criminals. The first known example of this approach has been weaving dictionary of Samuel Johnson in the skin of a criminal James Johnson after the latter hanged at Norwich in 1818
The Museum of St. Edmunds in Suffolk, England, presented a more well-known example - the protocol process on the legendary murderer William Cordero (Maria Martin, 1827, "Murder in the red barn"), bound in his own skin after execution. Handwritten confession of another criminal, George Walton (under the pseudonym James Allen), also bound in his own skin (stored in the Boston Athenaeum). Walton had insisted on such a testament to the gallows.

Among other well-known examples of such books can note a copy of the Koran in the Public Library of Cleveland, leather-bound special pious blagovernogo according to his testament, a book with the translation of Jacques Delille ("Georgics" and the second a famous poem by Virgil), bound with leather, secretly stolen from his corpse in a morgue, and ironically, bound in human skin a copy of the book on skin diseases.


You will be in London - buy a ticket for a tour of the city center in an open bus. There is a headset, you can listen to explanations in Russian. In Hyde Park you will hear that what is now the "Speakers Corner", was a place of executions. The executions were the main entertainment of the public audience in London for many centuries. Home gallows had some (I forget) humorous name. The occasion for humor was evident: there on UNEVEN beams were 21 loop, so that the result is like a tree. Whether she reminded the British Christmas tree with ornaments, or anything else. And the gallows worked without downtime, underemployment was not.

Some things will help you understand art. Cultural historians have long recognized that even in the ancient, biblical and mythological subjects European artists reflect the realities of life around them. And these realities are damning. Look at the engravings by Durer and Cranach. You will find that the guillotine existed for two centuries (!) Before the French Revolution. You'll see how the eye-related victim twists a brace as the pull intestine navivaya them on a special wall, like raspyalennogo upside-down man being cut saw from the crotch to the head, with both men flayed alive. Flaying alive - just part of the plot not only graphics but also the art of Western Europe, with the thoroughness and accuracy of oil paintings shows, firstly, that the artists were familiar with the subject was not hearsay, and secondly, the genuine interest in the topic. Suffice it to recall the late Dutch painter XV - early XVI century. Gerard David.

Moscow publishing house "Ad Marginem" released in 1999, translated the work of contemporary French historian Michel Foucault, supervise and punish "(by the way, on the cover - another excoriation), which contains many quotations from the regulations on procedures for public executions and torture in various European countries until the middle of last century. European written on have used a lot of imagination to make the penalty not only an extremely long and painful, but spectacular - one of the chapters in the book Foucault ironically titled "Shine penalty." Reading is not for impressionable. [Фуко перечисляет страны, принявшие "современные" судебные кодексы (что знаменовало новую эру в уголовном правосудии), в таком порядке: "Россия, 1769; Пруссия, 1780; Пенсильвания и Тоскана, 1786; Австрия, 1788; Франция, 1791 (год IV), 1808 и 1810" (М.Фуко, "Надзирать и наказывать", М., 1999, с. 13).].

http://malech.narod.ru/evr10.html

[Тютчев]

The skulls of Albrecht Durer:

[Тютчев]

The skull of Rembradta: