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

Description

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.

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

Michel Wolgemut

c. 1493

Accession Number

51535

Medium

Handcolored woodcut in black on cream laid paper

Dimensions

Block: 19.4 × 22.5 cm (7 11/16 × 8 7/8 in.); Sheet: 44.5 × 30.8 cm (17 9/16 × 12 3/16 in.)

Classification

woodcut

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Joseph Brooks Fair Fund