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| Hans Baldung The Knight, The Lady and Death ca. 1498-1503 oil on panel Musée du Louvre |
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| Master S (Netherlandish printmaker) Memento Mori ca. 1515-45 hand-colored engraving British Museum |
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| Anonymous French Artists Death of the Elephant ca. 1530 wool and silk tapestry Musée du Louvre |
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| Anonymous French Artists Tombstone with the Taking of Christ ca. 1540-50 stone relief (originally painted) Musée du Louvre |
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| Germain Pilon Figure funéraire de Valentine Balbiani, vivante et morte 1573 marble Musée du Louvre |
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| attributed to Leonhard Kern Memento Mori with sleeping Cupid ca. 1630 ivory Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Pietro Vecchia Ex Voto with Angel proffering Skull to seated Woman while St Justina of Padua hovers in the Sky above 1640 oil on canvas Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice |
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| Thomas Blanchet Classical Composition with Tomb and Mourners ca. 1654 drawing British Museum |
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| Giuseppe Maria Mitelli Death in Graveyard ca. 1675 engraving British Museum |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist after Giacinto Gimignani Death of an Old Man ca. 1680 etching and aquatint Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Death of a Mother ca. 1750 etching and aquatint Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Placido Fabris Postmortem Portrait of Antonio Canova 1836 oil on canvas Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice |
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| James Ensor Masks confronting Death 1888 oil on canvas Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| William Nicholson Time and Death illuminating the Dissection of a Heron ca. 1928 watercolor and gouache on board Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Joop Sanders Death and Entrances 1951 oil on canvas Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin |
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| Meret Oppenheim X-Ray of My Skull 1964 gelatin silver print San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
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| Nicole Eisenman Death playing Checkers 2002 watercolor and ink on paper Museum of Modern Art, New York |
To ask the hard question is simple;
Asking at meeting
With the simple glance of acquaintance
To what these go
And how these do:
To ask the hard question is simple,
The simple act of the confused will.
But the answer
Is hard and hard to remember:
On steps or on shore
The ear listening
To words at meeting,
The eyes looking
At the hands helping,
Are never sure
Of what they learn
From how these things are done.
And forgetting to listen or see
Makes forgetting easy;
Only remembering the method of remembering,
Remembering only in another way,
Only the strangely exciting lie,
Afraid
To remember what the fish ignored,
How the bird escaped, or if the sheep obeyed.
Till, losing memory,
Bird, fish, and sheep are ghostly,
And ghosts must do again
What gives them pain.
– W.H. Auden (1930)