The Danse macabre has a long literary and artistic tradition across much of Europe, from Finland to Britain, France, Spain, the Empire and the Low Countries. It shares its moralising message with the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead and with transi monuments. The essays in this volume offer new insights into the dissemination and reception of the Danse macabre in different media from the early fifteenth century on. It also critically assesses the available evidence about artists and patrons and about extant and lost examples, from monumental murals to cycles in manuscripts and print.
Sophie Oosterwijk, Ph.D. in Art History (Leicester, 1999) and in English Literature (Leiden, 2009), is an independent researcher. She has published numerous articles on the Danse macabre and on medieval tomb monuments as well as four co-edited volumes, including a text edition of John Lydgateâs Dance of Death (Brill, 2021) and Writing, Dancing and Performing Death across Late Medieval Europe: Texts and Contexts (Brill, 2026).
Laurent Ungeheuer, Ph.D. in Art History (Ãcole Pratique des Hautes Ãtudes, Paris, 2015), is an independent researcher. His work focuses on the Burgundian court, medieval books of hours and representations of death. He has published several articles and is co-editor of Writing, Dancing and Performing Death across Late Medieval Europe: Texts and Contexts (Brill, 2026).
Medieval historians and art historians; researchers of medieval literature and culture, early printing and conservation studies; and anyone interested in medieval death and the macabre in word and image.