fantasy inspiration

This macabre rosary dates back to about 500 years ago, and it's decorated with ivory beads that depict various stages of death and decay.

As the Metropolitan Museum of Art describes:

Each bead of the rosary represents the bust of a well-fed burgher or maiden on one side, and a skeleton on the other. The terminals, even more graphically, show the head of a deceased man, with half the image eaten away from decay.

Above: a terminal bead from one end of the rosary

Graphic depictions of death and decay often appear in the Christian artwork of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, when those images were used to underscore the fleeting nature of mortality and to emphasize the importance of seeking spiritual salvation (at least in the eyes of the Church).

Above: the terminal bead from the other end

This publication describes how depictions of death were used and interpreted by many Christians, especially in Europe:

Before the end of the Middle Ages, images of the human skull had become indelibly linked with somber meditation on the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death and decay. The skull became a ubiquitous motif in the visual arts, from manuscript illuminations of the Office of the Dead to ivory prayer beads of a human head bisected vertically to present a fleshy face attacked by worms on one side and a skull laid bare on the other.

Above: this bead comes from a similar rosary that was also made in Germany during the early 1500s, and it depicts four human figures in various stages of decay

As this article notes:

Dating from the late Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, there are many surviving memento mori pendants from rosaries. Frequently double-sided, the pendants are often decorated with a skull on one side and a youthful face on the other.

I also discussed some of these motifs in my previous post about the "catacomb saints."

Sources & More Info:

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Rosary

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Eternal Ancestors: the Art of the Central African Reliquary

Victoria and Albert Museum: Memento Mori Pendant from a Similar Rosary

Carved shells by Cornelis Bellekin, ca. 1700

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011).

Daughter of the Minotaur (2010)