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Credit
A monument teaching mortality, including figures and symbols alluding to death. Woodcut by A. Andreani after G. Fortuna, ca. 1588. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Top, an entablature with various mortality-motifs; cherubim with down-turned torches, an hourglass and skull. Left and right, obelisks with skulls as finials and Greek inscriptions on the bases: "Mnēmoneue" (left) and "apopsuchein" (right) (Mnēmoneue apopsuchein, remember [that you] die)
Below the entablature, a cave in which sit the three Fates. On the front of the moulding on which they sit, the words "Iter ad" (left) and "vitam" (right) (Iter ad vitam, the journey to life). Left and right, cartouches with the mottoes "Bonis bona" (good things to the good) and "Malis mala" (bad things to the bad). The upper part of the monument is supported on the left and right by atlantes in the form of standing skeletons
Below the Fates, a wheel of death, engraved around the rim "Omnibus hominibus semel mori post hoc autem iudicium statutum" (it is laid down that all men die once, but after that [comes] judgment). The eight spokes of the wheel are engraved with mottoes about death, all of which require the suffix -mus (e.g. pri
The base of the monument forms a sarcophagus on the front of which are skulls, books, coins etc. Within it is a cartouche engraved "Tria sunt vere quae me faciunt flere" (there are truly three things which make me weep". Below, the three things are listed: "Primum quidem durum, quia scio me moriturum. Secundum uerò plango, quia moriar, et nescio quando, tertium autem flebo, quia nescio ubi manebo." Left and right, cartouches held by skeletal hands with skulls above, engraved "Memento mori" and "Memorare novissima"
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