Caricatures of Death Personified

From a pre-Revolutionary magazine, first published in Russia in 1906. Illustrations by Boris Kustodiev.

Personifications of death included depictions of the devastating 1906 drought and ensuing famine, and the ravages of cholera, in the midst of revolutionary uprisings in Moscow.

biomedicalephemera:

Wax anatomical models of man and woman; half-skeleton, half-living, in fashionable Regency garments.

It’s unknown if these models were intended as a darkly comic “memento mori” sort of novelty, or a teaching aid, or both.

The skeletons are accurate enough to have been used to teach students how the articulations line up in the living body, so even as a novelty, they may have had an educational use.

Models located at Science Museum London, originally created ca. 1810-1830.

The kiss of death.

This astonishing sculpture forms part of Barcelona’s Poblenou Cemetery.  The Kiss of Death (El Petó de la Mort in Catalan and El beso de la muerte in Spanish) dates back to 1930. A winged skeleton bestows a kiss on the lips of a handsome young man: is it ecstasy on his face or resignation? Little wonder the sculpture elicits strong and varying responses from whoever gazes upon it.