(Lauri Sillak) Laurentsius

The skull has been depicted in art history throughout the centuries for different reasons and with different ideologies. Memento mori should contain an important message for the living – remember your own mortality, because none of us in this world has the status of a god, i.e. is immortal. In St Nicholas Church there is a fragment of Bernt Notke’s Danse Macabre (oil on canvas, late 15th century), the most important work of medieval art in Estonia, which depicts equality in the face of death, regardless of one’s earthly social hierarchy. Lauri Sillak, aka Laurentsius, has trained himself to paint in the old master style with great skill, and so it is here.