Italy, Art and Memento Mori
For most of our adult lives my husband and I have tried not to put off the things we wanted to do for later dates, always keeping in mind the motto we saw in an ice cream shop in Ashland Oregon many years ago: Life is short. Eat dessert first. That advice became our mantra, and since one of our passions is travel, we have taken as many trips each year as time and money permitted.
Recently, just before the pandemic, we were in Italy, visiting Rome and Florence, with day trips to Pompeii and Tuscany. We ate our way through each day, enjoying every morsel of food and drop of wine, and we were stunned again and again by the spectacular Roman ruins, the beauty of the architecture of churches like the Duomo in Florence and St. Peters Basilica in Rome, and the richness of the art everywhere we went. But we were struck also by the Memento Mori paintings and sculptures everywhere that remind the viewer of the precariousness of life and the inevitability of death.
In Pompeii we saw a whole city where all life ceased in a day, frozen in mid breath as the poisonous gasses of Mt. Vesuvius killed young and old and buried them in ash. In every museum and church in Rome and Florence, the artwork--which glorifies the human body, or portrays Greek and Roman mythology, or Mary and the infant Jesus, or the adoration of the saints--hangs alongside Memento Mori art. Sometimes it is a skull held by a figure as in Jusepe de Ribera’s portrait of St Francis of Assisi. Sometimes it is a still life, called Vanitas art, showing lush flowers and greenery beset by insects which devour them or gleaming fruit and fish, glistening fresh from the water, with some portions beginning to spoil and rot. This symbolic art points to the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the certainty of death.
It is something of a shock to be constantly confronted with our mortality while we are focused on living to the fullest. But it is a theme that art in all its forms has always thrust before us. And it’s not a bad thing to remember as we make choices in our lives for joy and fulfillment, especially at this time when the threat of death lurks in every grocery store.
My sister in law has a tag line after her signature on all her emails. “Life is not a dress rehearsal,” it says. In that view, every day counts, every action is important and all of us should be as present and aware as it is possible to be.
