The Triumph of Death

This painting is a brutal illustration of many types of people being indiscriminately taken by death. Skeletons are murdering hundreds of people, everyone from peasants to nobles and from children to the King. None are spared at the hands of death. This painting illustrates the influence of the Dutch master painter Hieronymus Bosch, who also painted demonic illustrations of death and the supernatural. Brueghel created a few of these demonological paintings, including Mad Meg but soon returned to his prized genre paintings of peasants and landscapes. This painting has often been referenced in popular culture, books, on the cover of CD albums and even in video games.