Skeleton Hanging from a Tree in a Landscape 1570 - 1626

Paul Bril sketched this ink drawing, *Skeleton Hanging from a Tree in a Landscape*, sometime before 1626. Bril was a Flemish artist active in Rome, where the visual language of landscape painting was being formalized, even as it was haunted by reminders of mortality. Here, the pastoral beauty is disrupted by a hanging skeleton; death is not so far from life. The landscape genre often served as a backdrop for allegorical or historical narratives. Bril subverts such conventions, and instead presents a stark image of death set against the serene backdrop of nature. The image may reflect the anxieties of the time. The ever-present threat of disease and famine and the grim realities of religious conflict and the Thirty Years' War contributed to a preoccupation with death, particularly in art and literature. Bril seems to be asking: what kind of social order tolerates public executions and leaves bodies to decompose as a warning? While the drawing offers a glimpse into the social anxieties of the 17th century, it also invites us to reflect on our own relationship with mortality and the transience of life.