Memento Mori!

A Bernini marble sculpture of a skull rediscovered in Dresden – as described in Art News:

Eerily life-like marble skull—hidden in plain sight in a German castle—was made by Bernini for the Pope.

The artistic sensitivity of the baroque world was extraordinary! The marble skull was made for Pope Alexander VII around 1655. If you visit Dresden the skull can be viewed in an exhibition that has just opened. The gallery’s full description is here:

Bernini, the Pope and Death

“In the seventeenth century, sudden and often violent death was omnipresent, which is why people were intensely preoccupied with mortality. A constant threat was posed not only by wars and assaults, but above all by diseases. In 1656 there was an outbreak of plague in Rome, and it is remarkable how closely the measures Alexander VII used to fight the epidemic (quarantine, masks, and the extensive shutting down of public life) resemble those that determine our everyday life in the face of the coronavirus today. Death, too, is again more prominent in people’s consciousness due to the current situation, and Bernini’s death’s head thus proves to be a memento mori of extraordinary topical relevance.“

(From the gallery’s description)

Actually, people “were intensely preoccupied with mortality” in almost all ages and cultures up to the dawn of Western Modernity, which has made a deliberate effort to suppress and marginalize the subject. A topic already incomparably set forth by Edgar Allen Poe in The Masque of the Red Death.