The Dance of Death

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These are Dance of Death pictures by the 19th century British artist Thomas Rowlandson. The Dance of Death genre, which first appeared in the 15th century as a reaction to the Black Death, featured the figure of Death coming to claim its victims. Sometimes they were a reminder that death comes to us all, but often they were little morality tales about the end waiting for the debauched.

These images, and those after the jump, art taken from Everything Old is New Again's post The English Dance of Death: Thomas Rowlandson’s Scathing Memento Mori 1814-1816. There are more examples there, as well was the captions that accompanied the illustrations.

Thomas Rowlandson

Plague art

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Whelp, with the Wuhan virus upon us it is time to visit older pandemics via art. These images, and those after the jump, are primarily of the Black Death, but there are a few other plagues tossed in for good measure. Hopefully, if we're lucky, future Wuhan Flu art will only be of rushes on the toilet paper aisle and not stacks of dead bodies.

Ohh-ohh, fleas on rats, fleas on rats

Above is a rather odd song about the Black Death. I'll warn you, the "fleas on rats" chorus is liable to get stuck in your head, I know it drove me nuts as I merrily hummed it for a day or two.

It's from a series of educational songs produced to introduce various subjects in high school (at least that's what I gather from the comments). I don't know how well they work, but I imagine they are pretty good for kicking off a lecture on a given topic. People younger then me fondly remember Schoolhouse Rock from Saturday mornings, I suspect the generation now in high school will have fond memories of these.

It is from a YouTube channel called historyteachers (History for Music Lovers). If you go there you can find more of their video efforts.

Along with the Black Death one, I quite liked Copernicus ("Because" by the Beatles).