Chilling Art: Five Unsettling Paintings About Death

How art can illuminate the darkness of dying

Life and Death (1910–15) by Gustav Klimt. Oil on canvas. Leopold Museum, Vienna. Source Wikimedia Commons

Paintings about death come in a fascinating variety of forms. Sometimes they are symbolic, drawing on long-established motifs — like islands, rivers, dark forests, skulls and skeletons — to get to the heart of our communal fears about death.