Macabre Dances

Six gouaches on paper representing dances of death, 19th century Switzerland, wooden frames from a later period.

These delicate gouaches revisit with both humor and intensity the theme of the Dance of Death, inherited from the Middle Ages. The skeletons, grimacing figures of death, draw into their round characters of every social condition – clerics, dignitaries, burghers, and sovereigns – underlining the vanity of status and the inescapable common fate. The freshness of the colors, the quality of the drawing, and the elegance of the gestures give the ensemble a distinctive narrative strength, poised between symbolic gravity and theatrical fantasy. Presented in wooden frames, these gouaches reflect the Romantic spirit of the 19th century, fascinated by medieval imagery and its allegories.