If you are like me, and have a love for creepy art pieces, then it has probably led you to lots of imagery with titles or descriptions including the words “Triumph of Death”.

“Triumph of Death” refers to a section of a 14th Century poem called “Triumphs” by Francis Petrarch. And since I wanted to share this image anyway, I figured I could include a few lines.

How near you are your end; behold, I am...

Millions of dead heap'd on th' adjacent plain;
No verse nor prose may comprehend the slain

As in those trifling follies not to trust;
And if they be deceived, in end 'tis just:

Ah! more than blind, what gain you by your toil?
You must return once to your mother's soil

How many moaning plaints, what store of cries
Were utter'd there, when Fate shut those fair eyes

For which so oft I sung; whose beauty burn'd
My tortured heart so long; while others mourn'd

By force extinguish'd, but as lights decay,
And undiscerned waste themselves away

If you would like to read the poem in full, check out “The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch” for free via Project Gutenberg. That is where I got these lines from.

Image Source: “Illustration of Petrarch’s Triumph of Death” (16th Century) by Unknown – Bibliothèque nationale de France, public domain.