Traditional raised Sami storehouse, displayed at Skansen, Stockholm. A similar structure, the izbushka, is mentioned in Russian children stories as a house with chicken feet.
This is a painting of Jacek Malczewski called simply ‘Death’ and it’s my favourite personification of death in any medium.
She’s not creepy or scary, or sexy, or abstract. She is this thick woman with worn hands, dressed as normal, with a non-stylised scythe and pins in her hair: like a farmer’s wife that just came form the field and rests against the wall, catching some sun. She is not creeping about the dying one holding her scythe over their head, she is just there, calmly waiting her turn.
This painting always fills me with peace and optimism when I think about death. She is just there, outside the window, in no hurry at all, sensible and down to earth. I can live with that.
Jacek Malczewski (15 July 1854 – 8 October 1929) is one of the most revered painters of Poland, associated with the patriotic Young Poland movement following the century of Partitions. He is regarded as the father of Polish Symbolism. In his creative output, Malczewski combined the predominant style of his times, with historical motifs of Polish martyrdom, the Romantic ideals of independence, Christian and Greek traditions, folk mythology, as well as his love of the natural environment.
I think that’s an axe? But IIRC, that’s an alternative tool for Death in Eastern Europe, along with a sword.
Steel Phoenix Studios 