Macabre Art...Revisited

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Last year for Halloween, I did a post on ossuary art-macabre at  its best! During the plague, there were so many dead, they could not all be buried and the bones became an issue.

Near Prague, the Sedlec ossuary is a macabre display of human bones in decorative use.

Bones from the bubonic plague and later wars now decorate the walls of the ossuary.

...and ceilings

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...and niches of the Sedlec chapel.

I think it was a dignified way to handle the situation. There is beauty and symmetry in the human form and the skeletal system.

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Beauty...and art, can be found in many unexpected places! Happy Halloween!

Macabre Art

One hour from Prague is Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora where the Church of All Saints is located.

With Halloween approaching, macabre art is on my mind. The Czech Sedlec Ossuary began around 1400 to house an overabundance of buried bodies.

An ossuary is a final resting place for human skeletal remains and becomes a necessity when burial space is scarce.

It is estimated that the bones of 40-70 thousand people are in the basement ossuary.

The bubonic plague and later Hussite Wars provided the bodies that now decorate the church. Wood carver and artist, Frantisek Rint designed how the bones would be placed.

This chandelier contains every bone in the human body. You can look at this as macabre, but there is beauty and symmetry in the designs Rint created. I think I would rather have my remains used in this way than to take up space in the ground!

 Thanks to the Berger Foundation for the endless files of photos of art around the world.