Most brasses depicted people in various costumes but there are also other monumental brasses showing various images of death.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the danse macabre or Dance of Death became a popular depiction on tombs, monumental brasses and other items. Death, depicted as a skeletal figure, is often shown holding a scythe, spade, spear or dart.
Some brasses show the person as a corpse or skeleton. There are shroud brasses showing the dead person in their funeral shroud. The body can be shown as emaciated or as a skeleton and sometimes the shroud is tied at the top and bottom. Many of these brasses date from the mid-fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries.
Brasses commemorating infants who died in their first month are known as chrysom brasses and show the child in swaddling clothes. If the mother also died, then the chrysom is shown as part of a memorial to the mother, often in her arms.
Painting of Dance Macabre on a wooden panel (AN1990.101)
Further Information
Find out more about:
- Brass Rubbing Collection Online - searchable database of the collection
- British Antiquitarian and Archaeological Arrchive at the Ashmolean
Sarah Glover
January 2012
