PART IX: Art

Most of the tombs during the 14th through 16th century share the same general characteristics—the antithesis of portraits of elegance and status. In the late 15th century, the sleeping figure moves closer to the corpse, a transi, which literally means “stiff”. The macabre transiis--a decomposing corpse inhabited and gnawed by worms, with shreds of flesh hanging from it. But the macabre figure of death is not simply an agent of destiny; he communicates with a hidden world which, in the 15th and 16th  century, he helped reveal: a world that emerges from the depths of the earth and from the interior of the body, inhabited by worms, toads, snakes, and hideous monsters 

From Ben Wilson's "Metropolis": Death mocks human folly in Lübeck's Dance Macabre, and the citizens were invited to laugh along when they saw it displayed...here is a corrupt mayor given his due; so too is the idle nobleman who abused his peasants. No amount of wealth will save you. Death, disease and wealth lived side by side. Here is art for an uncertain age, an age of recurrent war and pestilence. It is also art for the merchant: life is risky and great fortunes can be blown away like dust.