The Triumph of Death.

This is an image of Pieter Breugel's The Triumph of Death 1562. The painting is a panoramic landscape of death where burning cities in the distance blacken the skies and people are cruelly being slaughtered, drowned, burned and hung by armies of skeletons ploughing their way through the living - whose feeble attempts to flee or defend themselves are to no avail. The skeletons are representative of death itself, symbolic of man's inability to escape mortality and his ever impending doom. The painting depicts that people from all walks of life are subject to the same fate - Death does not discriminate against race, age or status and Breugel makes this apparent by including a cardinal and a king amidst the massacre. In the foreground a baby is having it's face nibbled at by a skeletal dog, and, to the left, the death knell of the world is sounded by skeletons hauling a cart full of skulls. In the distance (on the right) we can see what were known as "Breaking Wheels" - a form of torture typical of the period. These were large wooden wagon wheels mounted upon vertical poles where the condemned would be lashed and beaten to death with an iron cudgel.

Breugel's scenes are fascinating not only for their content and the apparent message that they convey, for the narrative within them and the endless amount of information that can be found, but also, most importantly, for the practical skills and expertise of Breugel himself.