David Garrick wordt door engelen weggedragen uit zijn graftombe 1783

This print, "David Garrick wordt door engelen weggedragen uit zijn graftombe", by James Caldwall, depicts angels carrying the actor David Garrick from his tomb. Here, the motif of angels bearing a soul skyward echoes ancient traditions of divine ascent. We can see a connection to classical depictions of Psyche carried by Eros or even earlier Egyptian beliefs in souls ascending to the heavens. The weeping figures surrounding the tomb remind us of the lamentations over the dead common in many cultures, from ancient Greek funerary rituals to Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary mourning Christ. This gesture, charged with grief, speaks to the universal human experience of loss. The scene evokes deep-seated emotions about mortality and the afterlife. The symbolic vocabulary of the scene—angels, a tomb, grieving figures—taps into our collective unconscious, resonating with primal fears and hopes about what lies beyond death. This work offers a glimpse into how cultural memory shapes our understanding of death and immortality. A continuous cyclical return that reminds us of our shared human condition across time and space.