Dance of Death, also called
Danse Macabre (from the
French language), is an artistic genre of
late-medieval allegory on the universality of
death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all. The
Danse Macabre consists of the dead or
personified Death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the
grave, typically with a
pope,
emperor,
king, child, and labourer. They were produced to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme was a now-lost mural in the
Saints Innocents Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424 to 1425.