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mors ludens, zabawa.pdf

The article deals with the specific aspect of the iconography of Personified Death in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. There are many examples in the Late Medieval Art depicting Death as a imitator of the leisure activities of humans, or more often being their alter ego or counterpart (in the chess play for example). Dances of Death often depict Death playing musical instruments or carrying children’s toys as well as other attributes of living, their vanishing social and individual identity. Very popular was also image of Death playing a chess game as an allegory of a medieval society, world and social order as well as of the relationship between man and woman. The checkmate executed by Death therefore doesn’t only symbolize the perish of all social strata and the world order but also a mortal sin andeternal damnation. Such images reflect complex understanding of death by the late medieval society especially in the period moral discourse.