![]() ![]() Also, unlike the other three fellow horsemen, Death herself is actually an Avatar of Death. Although she does not seek to increase her own power, just being in her presence drains even the greatest man of his strength and will to carry on. Whenever Death passes through a town, the number of deadly diseases grows, there is an increase in the number of life-taking accidents, and a sense of looming despair follows her wherever she treads. She is the last of the four horsemen, for she brings the final stroke to the lives of those subjected to the other three. Bringing an end to life by sword, famine and other woes. Images reminded everyone that death was coming for us all, and the thing that bound us together against it was empathy.Riding upon her pale horse named Despair, Death was the most famous of all the horsemen and the only one to be specifically named in scripture, Death, being given authority to kill men and animal alike the fearsome spirit was accompanied by Hell itself and was said to sweep across the land. At the same time, artists like Marcantonio Raimondi were creating works that focused not just on the suffering of the individual, but on those people who risked their own lives to help their fellow men, women, and children. Even as the Black Death returned to Europe, the images of Death and the Danse Macabre remained a popular visual warning that death could be waiting around the next proverbial corner - for everyone. The BBC says that's a shift that became more pronounced throughout the 16th century. When the same skeletons came for the poor, though, they offered a release from back-breaking labor, starvation, and a life of servitude. In his depictions of the Danse Macabre, skeletons and death coming for the rich and powerful were feared, because those were the people who lived a life of luxury, and had everything to lose. Atlas Obscura says that he wasn't just an artist, but he was an outspoken opponent of the economics of his era, which were the 1520s (give or take). That's most noticeable, perhaps, in the works of Hans Holbein the Younger. So, when did Death become the traditionally male figure he is today? (With, of course, some notable exceptions like Neil Gaiman's female Death from "The Sandman.") By the mid-15th century, the figure of Death had become associated with this passage from Revelations: "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." Standing amid piles of the dead is a lone woman, holding the arrows that delivered the plague to victims chosen with terrifying randomness. His wasn't the only female Death: Cherwell speaks to an image on the walls of France's Priory of St. ![]() ![]() Buffalmacco definitely could have read it, as it featured him in some of the stories. ![]() Interestingly, it's believed to be characters from Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron," a story about a group of rich friends who decide to wait out the plague by leaving the city and heading to the countryside. With flowing robes and long, white hair, this early figure of Death was depicted as looking to the next set of souls she's going to take with her. ![]()
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