The Macabre in Painting: When Art Confronts Death

The macabre is a subject that evokes death and all things related to death, it is something that terrifies us, being synonymous with lugubrious, creepy, sinister. Now, right after Halloween (an increasingly popular holiday in our country), we will talk in the article about the macabre in art, presenting you with 10 of the most macabre works throughout the history of painting.

The first of these painters, and perhaps the most important in the art of the macabre, was Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), whose paintings influenced the behavior, strengthened the faith and fueled the fear of the people of his time. His visions of Purgatory are among the most fantastic, grotesque and theatrical ever painted. Bosch painted madness, debauchery, torture and savagery with an overflowing sincerity that is unmatched. It is fascinating that violence and pleasure have so many strange similarities that one is full of satisfaction, the other of perversity – great artists, but they always knew not to step on that fine line between the two.

The message in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s masterpiece (1525-1569) is a grim one: there is no escape from the scourge of war. Men and women in the fire-sprinkled landscape try to defend themselves from the horsemen of death with sword and spear, but outnumbered, their efforts are futile. Not only is death inevitable and merciless for the poor and the upper class alike. The variety of tortures inflicted on the human race in times of war is endless. The hallucination is as intense in this painting as in Bosch’s, but more action-packed and cold-blooded.

Peter Bruegel the Elder – The Triumph of Death

Caravaggio's 1598–1599 painting The Beheading of Holofernes, the Assyrian general, by the widow Judith, was a hotly debated subject in the 15th and 16th centuries, becoming a standard depiction, revered for its theatricality, naturalism, and ambivalent depiction of Judith with a disgusted expression (who was both dedicated to God and also played the role of the seductress to kill the enemy of her people). Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi's (1593–1656) 1611–1612 version of the events was inspired by Caravaggio's masterpiece, but showed a much more violent struggle. Judith (in Artemisia's painting) is more determined to cut off Holofernes' head.

Artemisia Gentileschi – Judith Killing Holofernes

Of course, one of the most famous is Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Marat, which depicts Marat being stabbed while bathing, but there were other artists such as Edvard Munch (1863 -1944) who created a much more gory version of the event. While Jacques-Louis David's painting was painted in an idealized manner, Munch's painting takes a frenetic interpretation of the crime, this time placing him in a bed. This new medium, together with the nude representing Charlotte Corday (the woman who supposedly committed the crime), gives the work a strange, sexual air – one full of vulnerability and shame. The bloodstained sheets, the almost savage atmosphere of the room, and the mottled skin tones of Marat's corpse (he suffered from a skin disease, which in David's painting was overlooked) added a macabre realism and frenetic energy missing from earlier versions.

Edvard Munch - The Death of Marat

The pioneering French Romantic artist Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) is best known for his painting The Raft of the Medusa. The artwork captures and depicts the scene of survivors of a shipwreck attempting to signal a ship on the horizon. The incident was a real-life, devastating one (it is said that those on the drifting raft even resorted to cannibalism to survive, and only 15 of the 147 people on the raft survived). Hoping to launch his career, Géricault began to paint the aftermath of the accident with obsessive dedication. His studies for the final work were based on interviews with survivors, scale models of the raft, and trips to morgues and hospitals. Human remains were often loaned to artists for anatomical study, and Géricault soon amassed a collection of human body parts in stages of decomposition, which helped him document his work. The final painting caused a huge controversy when it appeared at the Paris Salon in 1819. However, most of his studies of rotting corpses remained in his studio until his death.

Francisco Goya - Saturn devouring his children

Francisco Goya (1746 -1828) painted many scenes of war and historical upheavals, but in his last years his mood became increasingly bitter, which was reflected in his paintings, which became darker and more macabre. Goya barely survived his illness, losing his trust in the Spanish government. He channeled these grievances into his so-called black paintings. Painted directly on the walls of his house between 1819 and 1823, 14 of Goya's works are haunted by dark thoughts and reflect his inner turmoil. Saturn Devouring His Children illustrates the morbid Greek myth, in which the Titan (Saturn) feared that his children might one day overthrow him from his throne, and ate them immediately after birth.

Théodore Géricault – Study

The almost cinematic depictions in the formidable series (The Manhunter, The Red Dragon) in watercolors by William Blake (1757-1827), illustrating various scenes from the Book of Revelation. Blake's works, as well as the biblical story itself, are terrifying, without further explanation.

William Blake – The Great Red Dragon

Painted with astonishing realism between 1520-1522 by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-8?-1543), this depiction of Christ weakened in a state of putrefaction, with open wounds, was the subject of controversy at the time and due to the painting's extremely unusual dimensions (30.5 x 200 cm), thus making it a unique object in the history of iconography. Was it intended for a tomb niche? With the mouth open, the eyes too, it is almost as if Jesus is represented taking his last breath; one could almost guess the presence of the Holy Spirit. Or Holbein may want to tell us that, even dead, Christ is still present and speaking.

Hans Holbein - Christ in the Tomb

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) painted this somber picture of a suicide sometime between 1877 and 1881, which offers us no context (be it heroic, blasphemous, or otherwise), Manet instead offers us the image of a fallen man's body, a pool of blood on a bed, and blood splatters on the wall behind him. A macabre mystery that has affected both critics and art historians, especially since there is much speculation about the real identity of the man depicted in the painting. Various connections are discussed regarding the deaths of other artists, even suggesting that it might be Émile Zola.

Edouard Manet - Suicide

Grotesque portraits by Francis Bacon (1909-1992) after Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez from 1650 have been a fascinating subject since the 1950s, when they first appeared. Bacon created more than 45 variations of the portrait, in which he distorts, deforms and imprisons the Pope. The figure with meat depicts the Pope between two halves of a cow carcass (which resemble angel wings in a morbid version), thus recalling those paintings from the 17th century called – Vanitas – which by representing those static natures with raw flesh, symbolized the dangers of worldly pleasures, being executed to warn the faithful.

Francis Bacon – Figure with flesh