A death head wearing the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, on the sarcophagus of Habsburg emperor Charles VI in the crypt of the Capuchin church in Vienna, Austria.

Macabre is a term applied to a type of artistic or literary works, characterized by a grim or ghastly atmosphere. In these works, there is an emphasis on the details and symbols of death. Macabre themes are often preoccupations in the Goth subculture. Themes are usually deliberate. Look up macabre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (424x662, 57 KB) en: A death head wearing the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, on the sarcophagus of Habsburg emperor Charles VI in the crypt of the Capuchin church in Vienna, Austria. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (424x662, 57 KB) en: A death head wearing the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, on the sarcophagus of Habsburg emperor Charles VI in the crypt of the Capuchin church in Vienna, Austria. ... The Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses, at the National Etruscan Museum. ... Crypt is also a commonly used name of water trumpets, aquatic plants. ... Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... This article is about the late 20th / early 21st century subculture. ...

History

This quality, deliberately adopted, is often found in ancient Greek and Latin writers, though there are traces of it in Apuleius and the author of the Satyricon. Note: This article contains special characters. ... For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ... Lucius Apuleius (c. ... Satyricon (or Satyrica) is a Latin novel, believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript text of the Satyricon calls him Titus Petronius. ...

The outstanding instances in English literature are John Webster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mervyn Peake and Cyril Tourneur. In American literature notable authors include Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. The word has gained its significance from its use in French, la danse macabre, for the allegorical representation, in painting or other art, of the ever-present and universal power of death, known in English as the Dance of Death, and in German as Totentanz. Charles Dickens was just one of the many famous people who was influcenced by the Macabre. The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of pictures, sculptured or painted, in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken, shrouded corpse, to people representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. Of the numerous examples painted or sculptured on the walls of cloisters or church yards through medieval Europe few remain except in woodcuts and engravings. The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S... John Webster (c. ... Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature. ... Mervyn Laurence Peake (July 9, 1911 – November 17, 1968) was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. ... Cyril Tourneur (1575 – February 28, 1626) was a Jacobean dramatist who enjoyed his greatest success during the reign of King James I of England. ... American literature refers to written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and Colonial America. ... Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, literary critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. ... Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives. ... The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel. ... Allegory of Music by Filippino Lippi. ... This article is about the philosophical concept of Art. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Ancient unreadable gravestones mark the position of graves in the parish churchyard at Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England A grave is a place where the body of a dead animal, generally human, is buried, often after a funeral. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... A woodcut is a method of printing in which an image is carved into the surface of a piece of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with chisels. ... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ...

Thus the famous series at Basel, originally at the Klingenthal, a nunnery in Little Basel, dated from the beginning of the 14th century. In the middle of the 15th century this was moved to the churchyard of the Predigerkloster at Basel, and was restored, probably by Hans Kluber, in 1568. The collapse of the wall in 1805 reduced it to fragments, and only drawings of it remain. A Dance of Death in its simplest form still survives in the Marienkirche at Lubeck as 15th-century painting on the walls of a chapel. Here there are twenty-four figures in couples, between each is a dancing Death linking the groups by outstretched hands, the whole ring being led by a Death playing on a pipe. At Dresden there is a sculptured lifesize series in the old Neustädter Kirchhoff, removed here from the palace of Duke George in 1701 after a fire. At Rouen in the cloister of St Maclou there also remains a sculptured danse macabre. There was a celebrated fresco of the subject in the cloister of Old St Pauls in London, and another in the now destroyed Hungerford Chapel at Salisbury, of which only a single woodcut, Death and the Gallant, remains. Of the many engraved reproductions, the most famous is the series drawn by Holbein. The theme continued to inspire artists and musicians long after the medieval period, Schubert's string quartet Death and the Maiden (1824) being one example. In the twentieth century, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal has a personified Death, and could thus count as macabre. For other uses, see Basel (disambiguation). ... Klingenthal is a town in the Vogtlandkreis district, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. ... Statistics State: Schleswig-Holstein District: Independent city Area: 214. ... For other uses, see Dresden (disambiguation). ... Rouen (pronounced in French, sometimes also ) is the historical capital city of Normandy, in northwestern France on the River Seine, and currently the capital of the Haute-Normandie (Upper Normandy) région. ... For other uses, see Salisbury (disambiguation). ... Hans Holbein is the name of two German Renaissance painters: Hans Holbein the Elder (1460-1524) Hans Holbein the Younger (c. ... Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer. ...   (IPA: in Swedish, but usually IPA: in English) (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish film, stage, and opera director. ... The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is an existential 1957 Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman about the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) across a plague-ridden landscape. ...

From The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein

The origin of this allegory in painting and sculpture is disputed. It occurs as early as the 14th century, and has often been attributed to the overpowering consciousness of the presence of death due to the Black Death and the miseries of the Hundred Years' War. It has also been attributed to a form of the Morality, a dramatic dialogue between Death and his victims in every station of life, ending in a dance off the stage^[1]. The origin of the peculiar form the allegory has taken has also been found in the dancing skeletons on late Roman sarcophagi and mural paintings at Cumae or Pompeii, and a false connection has been traced with the The Triumph of Death, attributed to Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Image File history File links From the Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger (1491). ... This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ... This article concerns the mid fourteenth century pandemic. ... Combatants France Castile Scotland Genoa Majorca Bohemia Crown of Aragon Brittany England Burgundy Brittany Portugal Navarre Flanders Hainaut Aquitaine Luxembourg Holy Roman Empire The Hundred Years War was a conflict between France and England, lasting 116 years from 1337 to 1453. ... Morality (from the Latin manner, character, proper behaviour) has three principal meanings. ... A sarcophagus is a stone container for a coffin or body. ... Cumae (Cuma, in Italian) is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. ... For other uses, see Pompeii (disambiguation). ... Andrea di Cione Arcangelo (c. ... Campo Santo (Latin, campus sanctus, holy field) is an Italian and Spanish name for a burial-place or cemetery. ... Leaning Tower of Pisa. ...

Etymology

The etymology of the word "macabre" is certain. According to Gaston Paris^[2] it first occurs in the form macabre in Jean le Fèvre's Respit de la mort (1376), Je fis de Macabré la danse, and he takes this accented form to be the true one, and traces it in the name of the first painter of the subject. The more usual explanation is based on the Latin name, Machabaeorum chorea (Dance of Macabees). The seven tortured brothers, with their mother and Eleazar^[3] were prominent figures on this hypothesis in the supposed dramatic dialogues. Another claim is that the word "Macabre" comes from the two word "מן הקבר " (Min Hakever), meaning "from the grave". Other connections have been suggested, as for example with St Macarius, or Macaire, the hermit, who, according to Vasari, is to be identified with the figure pointing to the decaying corpses in the Pisan Triumph of Death, or with an Arabic word maqbarah (مقبرة), cemetery. Not to be confused with Entomology, the scientific study of insects. ... Bruno Paulin Gaston Paris (August 9, 1839 - March 6, 1903), was a French scholar, the son of Alexis Paulin Paris. ... Jean Le Fevre (c. ... The Maccabees (Hebrew: מכבים, Makabim) were Jewish rebels who fought against the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, who was succeeded by his infant son Antiochus V Eupator. ... Macarius is the name of a number of people: Macarius of Egypt: (300-390) Egyptian monk and hermit. ... Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, Tuscany July 3, 1511 - Florence, June 27, 1574) was an Italian painter and architect, mainly known for his famous biographies of Italian artists. ... Leaning Tower of Pisa. ... “Arabic” redirects here. ...

See also

• Memento mori

Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation by Hans Memling. ...

Notes

1. ^ See Du Cange, Gloss., s.v. Machabaeorum chora.
2. ^ Romania, xxiv., 131; 1895.
3. ^ 2 Macc;vi., vii.