Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Other beliefs hold that the spectre of death is only a psychopomp, a benevolent figure who serves to gently sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. Death is most often personified in male form, although in certain cultures death is perceived as female. Death is also portrayed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Most claims of its appearance occur in states of near-death.
Statue of Death, personified as a human skeleton dressed in a shroud and clutching a scythe, at the Cathedral of Trier in Trier, Germany
Mictlantecutli in the Codex Borgia
La Calavera Catrina, one of José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina engravings (1910–1913)
Skeleton Fantasy Show by Li Song (1190-1264)
Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. It is, in other words, considered an embodiment or an incarnation. In the arts, many things are commonly personified. These include numerous types of places, especially cities, countries, and continents, elements of the natural world such as the trees or four seasons, four elements, four cardinal winds, five senses, and abstractions such as virtues, especially the four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins, the nine Muses, or death.
Set of porcelain figures of personifications of the four continents, German, c. 1775, from left: Asia, Europe, Africa, and America. Of these, Africa has retained her classical attributes. Formerly James Hazen Hyde collection.
Jean Goujon, The Four Seasons, reliefs on the Hôtel Carnavalet, Paris, c. 1550s.
Sandro Botticelli, Calumny of Apelles (c. 1494–95), with 8 personification figures: (from left) Hope, Repentance, Perfidy, innocent victim, Calumny, Fraud, Rancour, Ignorance, the king, Suspicion.
Constance and Fortitude in Vienna. Early modern statues with classical iconography.