A brief history of the Danse Macabre - Cat Irving - Zoom

Will You Join The Dance? A brief history of the Danse Macabre

The Dance of Death was an artistic trope that began in the fifteenth century to show death as the great leveller: everyone will die, from the lowliest peasant to the king and the pope. Death is depicted as a skeleton, leading people from all walks of life to join his dance. This talk will look at the origins of this image, and the way it evolved, and tied in with other memento mori images, as well as reflecting shifts in anatomical understanding

Bio:

Cat Irving has been the Human Remains Conservator for Surgeons’ Hall since 2015 and has been caring for anatomical and pathological museum collections for over twenty years. After a degree in Anatomical Science she began removing brains and sewing up bodies at the Edinburgh City Mortuary. Following training in the care of wet tissue collections at the Royal College of Surgeons of England she worked with the preparations of William Hunter at the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University, where she is now Consultant Human Remains Conservator. Cat is a licensed anatomist, and gives regular talks on anatomy and medical history. She recently carried out conservation work on the skeleton of serial killer William Burke

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