Death in the Image

Allegory, Autopsy, Ornament

Abstract

This article examines death in visual art as a process that exceeds mere representation; death is not treated as a passive theme but as an active structure that produces knowledge about violence, history, and collective relations. The analysis focuses on three distinct visual regimes in early modern European art. In Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death, death appears as a mechanized system, where the serial repetition of skeletons and the absence of transcendence generate a sense of rationalized violence. In the painting The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers, death is depicted as the brutal autopsy of the political body. Vanitas still life presents death as an introspective reminder while simultaneously concealing the material conditions of luxury and its colonial background. In all three cases, the image of death operates as a visual regime that structures vision and as an epistemological apparatus that produces knowledge of historical, political, and economic processes.