Danse Macabre (1490)

Author: Johannes de Castua

The concepts behind the Sunday sermons, incomprehensible to the common man, were changed in Glagolitic centres into realistic scenes of “The Poor Man's Bible”. In the procession of death the local painter stressed the basic fact: “In death we are all equal”. The critical treatment of the coarse rural self-satisfaction about the transience of human life consists of gradually ranked social classes and their reflections after death.  Pairs move towards the mistress of life, who is sitting on a throne at the end of the scene and opening the wooden lid of a sarcophagus. A gravedigger has just put down his shovel and hoe in front of the final, common resting place.