Large antique Memento Mori medallion

Large antique Memento Mori medallion, engraved with ink, framed in ivory with a skull scene protected by a smoke rock crystal.

The date 1797 is engraved at the top and the initials C.S.R. (Christo Sacrum Redemptori or Christum Redemptorem) at the bottom.

Italy 1797

Size: 11 cm L x 9 cm W x 1 cm H

Memento mori (Latin for "remember that you have to die") is an artistic symbol or trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards.

The philosopher Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting tombs. Plato's Phaedo, where the death of Socrates is recounted, introduces the idea that the proper practice of philosophy is "about nothing else but dying and being dead".

The Stoics of classical antiquity were particularly prominent in their use of this discipline, and Seneca's letters are full of injunctions to meditate on death. The Stoic Epictetus told his students that when kissing their child, brother, or friend, they should remind themselves that they are mortal, curbing their pleasure, as do "those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal". The Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader (himself) to "consider how ephemeral and mean all mortal things are" in his Meditations.

In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".