Memento mori is Latin for "remember that you must die." In art, the name covers any image or object meant to keep that thought in front of the viewer: a skull beside a living face, a skeleton on a tomb, an hourglass running out.
One of the best known memento mori images hides in The Ambassadors, a double portrait painted by Hans Holbein in 1533. On the floor between two richly dressed men lies a long gray smear, slanting across the tiles, and seen from the right spot, it turns into a skull.
The phrase itself comes with a popular origin story. English dictionaries record it from the 1590s, and the story traces it back to ancient Rome, to the parade held for a general after a great victory.
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That parade was called the triumph. The victorious general rode through Rome in a chariot before a cheering crowd, and the tale goes that a slave stood behind him, whispering memento mori into his ear so that he would not take himself for a god.
The trouble is that this version does not match its source. The account usually cited comes from Tertullian, an early Christian author who wrote in Roman North Africa about two centuries after Christ. In it, a voice at the general's back says "Hominem te memento," Latin for "remember you are a man."
The two Latin phrases sound alike, yet they carry different messages. One reminds a proud man that he is human, the other that he will die. Tertullian names no slave, and death never comes up in his account.
The figure behind the chariot
Roman carvings of the triumph put someone else behind the general…
What You'll Discover
The skeleton that speaks to churchgoers in Florence.
Where to stand to see Holbein's skull.
Why a prince was carved as a corpse.
Why a pocket watch counts as a warning.
How memento mori differs from vanitas.