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Pieter Brueghel was a Flemish painter of the sixteenth century in 1562 would make one of his darker works grim and called The Triumph of Death . At first glance, what stands out are those red and ocher colors giving it a hellish tone throughout the work. It has been said that the intention of painting is extremely psychological and moralistic, ie a statement of intent about the futility of the time, the insignificance of human problems and we all will be time sooner or later.
Brueghel was a humanist influenced by the works of Bosch, according to the Flemish tradition of using large format (117 cm x 162 cm) and develop a number of details in the composition, however the vision of death in his case is much more grim than Bosco, as Brueghel not use the Christian heaven and hell.
decided to represent this idea personified Death as a huge army of skeletons destroying everything in its path, women, men and children in a desolate landscape devoid of vegetation, even the sea is rough with shipwrecks and headlights ablaze. It is an almost apocalyptic vision influenced by episodes of Black Death that ravaged Europe in those days.
No one can escape death, whatever their social class, so we can see that in the left a king at all splendor falls as a skeleton shows the hourglass and the other steals your gold indicating the low value of money in the afterlife, it is a symbol of the sins of avarice and greed. The monks and religious are destroyed along with the gentlemen who unsuccessfully defended by the sword, we see right now as the court jester, frightened, hides under the table without a solution.
Consider carefully what happens in the foreground, we see a great final battle with Death over a red horse starving, scythe in hand, haranguing his troops while sweeping the men in a great slaughter. The Condemned and defeated men are thrust into an enormous coffin perhaps an allegory of the mouth of hell while being guarded by the armies of the underworld who use them as shields wooden coffin lids in a macabre scene. To the left is the carriage of the dead collected the skulls of the unfortunate while carrying an hourglass and a bell signifying the final account of life has arrived. The truth is to me this gives me a sense of influence l to Dante's Divine Comedy, but again is a totally personal opinion. 
If we look at the detail of the right we see the skeletons bursting into a kind of party with jugglers and pairs of lovers, death again mocks worldly pleasures, love and food. Observed a pair of lovers outside the drama playing a lute with a skeleton at his side taunting them also touching in turn. The card players around the table together with the lovers represent the sins of sloth, gluttony and lust and thus must be executed.
on the left is a small pond or lake where dead bodies of drowned with her swollen belly while others are thrown and killed. Skeletons fishing nets used to catch live while others dressed in white playing trumpet in a nod perhaps the Apocalypse. Also on the left side of the work can look like a giant bell tolling oxidized.
The fund is no less terrible, infantry and cavalry on the right and left around with no possibility of escape from the men in the middle. There is a kind of church or home where the skeletons are concentrated waiting to attack.
Everywhere there executions, gallows, beheadings and torture as the wheels used in the trials of heretics condemned by the Church. Added to this are fires, looting and plundering of the cemetery, removing the bodies from the graves to join the army of Death.
This work peterneció Elizabeth Farnese, second wife of Philip V, who had in the palace of the House, is currently on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
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