Memento mori in the context of "Hourglass"

The human condition can be defined as the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, reason, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed from many perspectives, including those of art, biology, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion.

As a literary term, "human condition" is typically used in the context of ambiguous subjects, such as the meaning of life or moral concerns.

The Braque Triptych (or the Braque Family Triptych) is a c. 1452 oil-on-oak altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. When open, its three half-length panels reveal, from left to right, John the Baptist, The Virgin Mary with Jesus and Saint John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalene. When the wings are closed, the work shows a vanitas motif of a skull and cross.

The Braque Triptych is the only surviving devotional work by van der Weyden known to be painted for private rather than public display. The altarpiece was probably commissioned by either Jehan Braque of Tournai or, more likely, his wife Catherine de Brabant – possibly after Jehan's sudden and early death in 1452. The couple had been married for only a brief period. Catherine was much younger than her husband; when they married in 1450 or early 1451, she was 20 and some 12 or 13 years his junior. She evidently held a deep and lasting affection for him. When she died, almost 50 years after him, she had asked to be buried alongside him, despite remarrying years earlier.

Vanitas is a genre of memento mori symbolizing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldly desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory items. The genre began in the 16th century and continued into the 17th century. Vanitas art is a type of allegorical art representing a higher ideal. It was a sub-genre of painting heavily employed by Dutch painters during the Baroque period (c.1585–1730). Spanish painters working at the end of the Spanish Golden Age also created vanitas paintings.

The Danse Macabre (/dɑːns məˈkɑːb(rə)/; French pronunciation: [dɑ̃s ma.kabʁ]), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory from the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.

The Danse Macabre consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer. It was produced as memento mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives and the vanity of earthly glory. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme (apart from 14th century Triumph of Death paintings) was a now-lost mural at Holy Innocents' Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424 to 1425. Written in 1874 by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre, Op. 40, is a haunting symphonic "poem" for orchestra. It premiered 24 January 1875.

A cadaver monument or transi is a type of funerary monument to a deceased person, featuring a sculpted tomb effigy of a skeleton, or of an emaciated or decomposing dead body, with closed eyes. It was particularly characteristic of the Late Middle Ages when they were designed as a memento mori to remind viewers of the transience and vanity of mortal life compared to the eternity and desirability of the Christian after-life. The format is in stark contrast to gisants, which are always recumbent, in full dress, with open eyes and hands clasped and raised in prayer.

Cadaver monuments first appeared in the 1380s and remained a popular form of funerary art for 200 subsequent years. In a still widely debated theory popularized by the historians Helen M. Roe and John Aberth, cadaver monuments are often interpreted as a form of memento mori or adaption of the motif of "The Three Living and the Three Dead". They show the human body's "transition" from life to decomposition, highlighting the contrast between worldly riches and elegance and the degradation of death.

A skull and crossbones is a symbol consisting of a human skull and two long bones crossed together under or behind the skull. The design originated in the Late Middle Ages as a symbol of death and especially as a memento mori on tombstones. Actual skulls and bones were long used to mark the entrances to Spanish cemeteries (campo santo).

In modern contexts, it is generally used as a hazard symbol, usually in regard to poisonous substances, such as deadly chemicals.

Charles Allan Gilbert (September 3, 1873 – April 20, 1929), better known as C. Allan Gilbert, was an American illustrator. He is especially remembered for a widely published drawing (a memento mori or vanitas) titled All Is Vanity. The drawing employs a double image (or visual pun) in which the scene of a woman admiring herself in a mirror of her vanity table, when viewed from a distance, appears to be a human skull. The title is also a pun, as this type of dressing-table is also known as a vanity. The phrase "All is vanity" comes from Ecclesiastes 1:2 ("Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.") It refers to the vanity and pride of humans. In art, vanity has long been represented as a woman preoccupied with her beauty. And art that contains a human skull as a focal point is called a memento mori (Latin for "remember death"), a work that reminds people of their mortality.

It is less widely known that Gilbert was an early contributor to animation, and a camouflage artist (or camoufleur) for the U.S. Shipping Board during World War I.