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The Istrian peninsular at the top end of the Adriatic Sea is a small enough spit of land in the European scheme of things but it has long been jam-packed with demographic tension. During the Late Medieval to Early Modern periods (1400s and 1500s) it could well have been one of the most contested areas on the planet. For a start, Istria was (and is) populated by three different ethnicities ― Italian, Slovenian, Croatian. In addition, this fractious littoral region was surrounded by three acquisitive empires ― Maritime Venice, Austrian Hapsburgs, Ottoman Turks.  An intriguing insight into this cockpit of animosity is given by its one element held in common, the Roman Catholic Church. In what is likely to have been an insular peasant society, serially suspicious and distrustful of any and all political authority, there was a shared space. Rare examples of seeing the world as if through one lens are still to be found in two tiny stone churches.  Tucked away in a forest on the site...

1. REMEMBER AT ALL TIMES TO BRING GOOD DEEDS WITH YOU "I call all and everyone to this dance:  pope, emperor, and all creatures poor, rich, big , or small.  Step forward, mourning won't help now!  Remember though at all times to bring good deeds with you  and to repent your sins  for you must dance to my pipe." Totentanz  of Reval (Tallinn) "On 23 August 1468 Lubeck's city council issued a letter to its counterpart in Reval requesting the transfer of the properties of a Reval cleric, Diderik Notken, to Bernt Notke, painter and burgher of Lubeck. According to this letter, Diderik had bequeathed all his real property in Reval for the wellbeing of his soul and for his relatives (to slichied ziner zelen vnde behuff syner angeborenen vrund). The painter referenced in this letter was the same Bernt Notke (c. 1440-1508) who around 1463 painted a cycle called the Dance of Death (Totentanz) in the chapel of St Matthew in Lubeck, which he later replicated under the b...

 "Basel's famous Totentanz  or Dance of Death was painted during the Council of Basel (1431-1448), possibly under the influence of the plague epidemic of 1439. The 60-m-long mural painted onto the inside wall of the cemetery of the Dominican convent showed 40 mortals locked in an encounter with Death. All that now remains of that work [Konrad Witz or his circle, Basel ca. 1435-1440, Tempura on plaster] are the 19 fragments that were saved when it was torn down in 1805 ... The Basel Dance of Death was one of the first, and still counts as one of the most important examples of the momento mori pictures, which spread throughout Europe from the 15th century onwards, being especially common in the monasteries of the mendicant orders." 'Basel Dance of Death: The Herald'  in Painting and Graphic Art, Historisches Museum Basel <hmb.ch/en/museums/objects-in-the-collection/details/s/basel-dance-of-death-the-herald> BASLER TOTENTANZ  ――  Rescued remnants from origina...

  "The earliest known representation of the danse macabre dates from 1424, when a mural representing the Dance of Death was painted on the external walls of the Cemetery of Holy Innocents in Paris. Although the walls and the paintings have long since been destroyed, the images are preserved in the woodcuts of Guyot Marchant's edition of the Dance Macabre , published in 1485. The authorship of the poem accompanying the illustrations has never been conclusively established, although from an early date it was ascribed to Jean Gerson, chancellor of the Sorbonne, and indeed its didactic tone is strongly reminiscent of the sermons for which Gerson was so famous. If not Gerson himself, it is probable that the author was a member of the theologian's circle. Marchant's book quickly attained great popularity ... The original edition sold out almost immediately, and was followed in 1486 by an expanded edition. It is apparent ... that the author of the poem and the artist who crea...