Description

Memento mori (literally: "remember you must die") is a well-known Latin phrase. The phrase originates from a particular custom typical of ancient Rome: when a general returned to the city after a war triumph and parading in the streets collected the honors that were bestowed on him by the crowd, he ran the risk of being overwhelmed by pride and delusions of size. To prevent this from happening, someone behind him uttered the phrase: «Respice post te. Hominem te memento »(" Look behind you. Remember you are a man "). The memento mori later became popular in Counter-Reformation Christian painting. The maximum symbolic development of the memento mori occurred in seventeenth-century painting and still life in whose composition a skull often appears placed next to flowers and fruit, often symbolically placed next to a clock, to underline the concept of tempus fugit. It also became the motto of the Trappist monks.