Perite

Mark Ruygrok
Perite (Perish)
2008
pigment on board
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Antonio Salamanca
Michelangelo's Tomb for Pope Julius II
in Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
1554
engraving
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

Johann Christian Marchand
Church Interior embellished for Obsequies of
Albrecht Antons von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
ca. 1710
mezzotint and etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Battista Franco (il Semolei)
The Lamentation
before 1561
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Abraham Janssens
The Lamentation
ca. 1621-22
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Johann Georg Wille after Pompeo Batoni
Death of Marc Antony
1778
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael
Antique Sculpture - Death of Cleopatra (or Sleeping Ariadne)
ca. 1515
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Georg Schweigger
Beheading of John the Baptist
ca. 1640-50
limestone relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Beheading of John the Baptist
1857
drawing
(print study for Bible illustration)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Sebald Beham
Death and the Maiden
1547
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jacob Binck after Raphael
Massacre of the Innocents
before 1569
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Abraham Bloemaert
Cain slaying Abel
ca. 1610
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

Benedetto Luti
Beheading of St Anastasius
ca. 1720
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Johann Christian Ruprecht after Albrecht Dürer
Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand
1653
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous German Printmaker
Skeleton
(labeled in Latin and German)
16th century
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Victor Müller
Torso with Visible Skeleton
before 1871
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

By his bird-lime and canes Eumelus lived on the creatures of the air, simply but in freedom. Never did he kiss a strange hand for his belly's sake. This his craft supplied him with luxury and delight. Ninety years he lived, and now sleeps here, having left to his children his bird-lime, nets and canes.

Three decades and twice three years did the heavenly augurs fix as the measure of my life. I am content therewith, for that age is the finest flower of life. Even ancient Nestor died.

This is the tomb of Marcellus the renowned physician, a most celebrated man, honoured by the gods, whose books were presented to the public library in fair-built Rome by Hadrian the best of our former emperors, and by admirable Antoninus, Hadrian's son; so that among men in after years he might win renown for his eloquence, the gift of Phoebus Apollo. He sung of the treatment of diseases in forty skilled books of heroic verse called the Chironides.

Orpheus won the highest prize among mortals by his harp, Nestor by the skill of he sweet-phrased tongue, divine Homer, the learned in lore, by the art of his verse, but Telephanes, whose tomb this is, by the flute.

In Africa on the banks of the Nile resteth with her twin babies Lamisca of Samos the twenty year old daughter of Nicarete and Eupolis, who breathed her last in the bitter pangs of labour. Bring to the girl, ye maidens, such gifts as ye give to one newly delivered, and shed warm tears upon her cold tomb. 

Call me Polyxena the wife of Archelaus, daughter of Theodectes and ill-fated Demarete, a mother too in so far at least as I bore a child; for Fate overtook my babe ere it was twenty days old, and I died at eighteen, for a brief time a mother, for a brief time a bride – in all short-lived. 

– from Book VI (Sepulchral Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)