Paintings under the roof of Spreuer Bridge

Under the roof of Spreuer Bridge, 67 paintings dating from 1626 to 1635 represent a “Dance of Death”. Death, represented as a skeleton or as the “Great Reaper” urges everybody to dance with him, i.e. to die. Death makes no difference between old and young, churchmen and laymen, rich and poor. This kind of paintings were often placed on cemetary walls. They expressed people’s feeling in the face of death especially during times of epidemic pestilence and were widespread all over late medieval Europe, but only very few examples have survived to date. The fascination for this theme has not completely gone, however, as the dedicated German website www.totentanz.de shows. Lucerne’s Dance of Death was designed by chief painter Kaspar Meglinger.