Ends

Arnold Böcklin
Paolo and Francesca in Hell
(scene from Dante's Inferno)
1895
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Luca Cambiaso
Death of Meleager
ca. 1570
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

William Crosbie
Post-Mortem
ca. 1950
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Francisque Duret (François-Joseph Duret)
Chactas with the corpse of Atala
(from the novel by François-René de Chateaubriand)
1836
oil on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Frans Floris
The Last Judgment
1565
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Jörgen Fogelquist
Hats in the Studio
and Reminder of the Events at Soledad Prison, Calif. USA
1971-72
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Théodore Géricault
Model posed as Corpse
before 1824
drawing
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Leon Golub
Mao Tse Tung II (in sarcophagus)
1978
acrylic on linen
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Fallen Figure for Romulus victorious over Acron
ca. 1812
drawing
(study for painting)
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Sveinung Iversen
Fly
2001
etching
Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum, Norway

Karen Knorr
Principles of Political Economy
1991
C-print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Guido Reni
Model posed as Dead Christ
ca. 1616
drawing
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury
Titian lying in State in Palazzo Barbarigo
1862
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Joseph Roques
Death of Marat
1793
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Johann Michael Rottmayr
Death of Seneca
ca. 1692
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Werner Tübke
Requiem
1965
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

"But when rosy-fingered Dawn, the child of morning, appeared (as Homer would say), when from the temple of Artemis rode forth my wise and beautiful Charikleia, then we realized that even Theagenes could be eclipsed, but eclipsed only in such measure as perfect female beauty is lovelier than the fairest of men.  She rode in a carriage drawn by a pair of white bullocks, and she was appareled in a long purple gown embroidered with golden rays.  Around her breast she wore a band of gold: the man who had crafted it had locked all his art into it – never before had he produced such a masterpiece, and never would he be able to repeat the achievement.  It was in the shape of two serpents whose tails he had intertwined at the back of the garment; then he had brought their necks round under her breasts and woven them into an intricate knot, finally allowing their heads to slither free of the knot and draping them down either side of her body as if they formed no part of the clasp.  You would have said not that the serpents seemed to be moving but that they were actually in motion.  There was no cruelty or fellness in their eyes to cause one fright, but they were steeped in a sensuous languor as if lulled by the sweet joys that dwelt in Charikleia's bosom.  They were made of gold but were dark in color, for their maker's craft had blackened the gold so the mixture of yellow and black should express the roughness and shifting hues of their scales.  Such was the band round the maiden's breast.  Her hair was neither tightly plaited nor yet altogether loose: where it hung long down her neck, it cascaded over her back and shoulders, but on her crown and temples, where it grew in rosebud curls golden as the sun, it was wreathed with soft shoots of bay that held it in place and prevented any unseemly blowing in the breeze.  In her left hand she carried a bow of gold, the quiver was slung over her right shoulder, and in her right hand she held a lighted torch.  But as she was that day the light in her eyes shone brighter than any torch." 

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)