MASACCIO 1401-1428 Trinity with Donors c1428  Florence,S.Maria Novella 16' tall fresco

memento mori

From Shakespeare's HAMLET Act 5, Scene 1 (In Grave Yard) HAMLET What man dost thou dig it for?   CLOWN For no man, sir.   HAMLET What woman, then?   CLOWN For none, neither.   HAMLET Who is to be buried in't?   CLOWN One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.

HAMLET

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the

card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord,

Horatio, these three years I have taken a note of

it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the

peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he

gaffs his kibe. How long hast thou been a

grave-maker?

 

CLOWN

Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day

that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

 

HAMLET

How long is that since?

 

CLOWN

Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it

was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that

is mad, and sent into England.

 

HAMLET

Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

 

CLOWN

Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits

there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there.

 

HAMLET

Why?

 

CLOWN

'Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men

are as mad as he.

 

HAMLET

How came he mad?

 

CLOWN

Very strangely, they say.

 

HAMLET

How strangely?

 

CLOWN

Faith, e'en with losing his wits.

 

HAMLET

Upon what ground?

 

CLOWN

Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man

and boy, thirty years.

 

HAMLET

How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?

 

CLOWN

I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we

have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce

hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year

or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

 

HAMLET

Why he more than another?

 

CLOWN

Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that

he will keep out water a great while; and your water

is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.

Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth

three and twenty years.

 

HAMLET

Whose was it?

 

CLOWN

A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?

 

HAMLET

Nay, I know not.

 

CLOWN

A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a

flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull,

sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

 

HAMLET

This?

 

CLOWN

E'en that.

 

HAMLET

Let me see.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Takes the skull
 

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio:a fellow

of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath

borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how

abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at

it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know

not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your

gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,

that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one

now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let

her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must

come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell

me one thing.

 

HORATIO

What's that, my lord?

 

HAMLET

Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i'

the earth?

HORATIO

E'en so.

 

HAMLET

And smelt so? pah!

Puts down the skull

HORATIO

E'en so, my lord.

 

HAMLET

To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may

not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,

till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO

'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

 

HAMLET

No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with

modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as

thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,

Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of

earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he

was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:

O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,

Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

MASACCIO 1401-1428 Trinity with Donors c1428  Florence,S.Maria Novella 16' tall fresco Italina Renaissance Jan van Eyck Arnolfini Wedding 1434 oil and tempera, 33x22.5"  London National Gallery Flemish Renaissance

Craig Harbison.   "Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism."   (London: Reaktion Books,) 1995. Jan van Eyck Arnolfini Wedding 1434 oil and tempera, 33x22.5"  London National Gallery Flemish Renaissance

Jan van Eyck Arnolfini Wedding 1434  oil and tempera on oak 82x60cm   In the early 1990s Jacques Paviot, a French naval historian found something that challenged previously accepted beliefs about the painting. While doing unrelated research, he stumbled across a reference to what appears to have been what was generally accepted to be happening in the painting: Arnolfini's wedding to Giovanna Cenami. But the document Paviot found placed the wedding in 1447, 13 years after the date on the double portrait and six years after van Eyck's death.