Table of contents hide 1 Description of the death triangle. 2 Death causes terror, because of loneliness and darkness. 3 Spiritual leisure Analysis of the work. 4 Characteristics of the work.

Spiritual leisure The triumph of death presents us with the opportunity to visit the Prado Museum to admire this pictorial work, made by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, this artist of Dutch origin. The painting is the triumph of death, at a time when Europe was in a crisis, due to food shortages, climatic changes and a great economic imbalance between the wealthy class and the poor.

Description of the Death Triumph .

This work is painted in the Mannerist style and full of situations that when we observe it we relate it to death, despair and extermination . In the painting there are no spaces that are not suffering. You can see that in the painting there are characters, drawing the sword and others imploring for their lives, the other characters, seem to escape in the chaos that represents the earth's roughing. A darkened sky and a smoky earth, burning ships and shipwrecks everywhere, the feeling is that extermination spreads throughout the painting in a continuous demolishing advance. Death is the main protagonist with all his pain and fears.

Death causes terror, because of loneliness and darkness.

It seems that there is no escape for any of the characters in the painting, the observer is invaded by a feeling of terror and fear, feeling that death is going towards him . The play is violence and there is no resistance on the part of the characters who see death approaching them, generating despair and desolation. Death is represented by skeletons, an army of them commanded by another skeleton that is mounted on top of a horse very skinny

Skeletons are found that advance along the ground and people fleeing into tunnels that are not known where they are going, towards the center is a fallen mother with a dead child in her arms and a dog is smelling the creature, there is a coffin with a No corpse in his shroud. In the lower right, there is a couple who are in love and do not see what is happening there is a musician with a diamond-painted jacket and is getting under a table and a skeleton playing the lute.

Spiritual leisure - Analysis of the work.

The work suggests an apology, to the political situation and the crisis that was being lived in the 14th century Europe, for the year 1562 date that the author makes the painting, it was like a premonition of the fall of the monarchies, Europe is whipped by the black plague and the climatological phenomena that caused a famine.

The absence of images of a religious type is noted, angels or all powerful God are not shown, being represented with modifications apocalyptic images.

All men are condemned to death and no one can change the sentence.

Curiously, the author takes hobbies and card games and places them together with characters with detailed clothing of the time such as the minstrel, musical instruments and other artifacts of the moment.

The theme of death about worldly customs is used regularly by Nordic painters, the equality of all before death .

Characteristics of the work.

This painting is made in oil on wood . Its dimensions are 117 cm high by 162 cm wide. The style used by the author is considered as mannerism, an anti-classical style, with elongated figures, unusual environments with cold colors and little naturalness.

The triumph of death has been used commercially on covers of Rock albums, such as Black Sabbat and Hellhamer.

In the Spiritual Leisure section, there is a wealth of knowledge available at all times, which can help illuminate your life.

AUTHOR: Antonio, editor of the great family of hermandadblanca.org