Art History I / Death, Transcendence and the Human Condition
Practice question · Put in order

Arrange these developments in the imagery of death in order.

Hints
  1. The Judgement is medieval and precedes the plague imagery.
  2. The vanitas is a seventeenth-century genre.
Show the answer
  1. The Last Judgement becomes standard on church west walls
  2. The danse macabre appears after the plague
  3. The ars moriendi is printed and widely circulated
  4. Holbein publishes his Dance of Death woodcuts
  5. The Dutch vanitas still life flourishes
Why

The sequence moves from the collective to the individual. The Last Judgement addresses everyone at once at the end of time; the vanitas addresses a single person in a single room, holding a single skull, and that narrowing tracks a wider change in devotional practice.

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