Skull Memento Mori Late 19th Century

Description

Heading : Skull Memento Mori
Date : Late 19th Century
Period : Victoria 
Origin : Unknown 
Size :  Height 15cm. approx 13cm width
Condition : Some teeth missing. detached jaw bone. missing cranium. This piece was used in anatomy lessons at a London university and is in this condition the inside of the skull could be examined. 
Weight : 636 grams 

Alas. poor Yorick! I knew Him. Horatio: a fellow

of infinite jest. of most excellent fancy: he hath

borne me on his back a thousand times; and now. how 

abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at 

it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know

not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your 

gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment.

that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one

now. to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

Now get you to my lady’s chamber. and tell her. let 

her paint an inch thick. to this favour she must

come; let her laugh at that. 

This famous extract from Hamlet is but the most notable of the manifold Memento Moris littered throughout the history of art. literature. and philosophy. From the Jahwist. to Siddhattha Gotama. to  Plato. to Holbein. to Hirst the greatest thinkers and artists in human history’s work can be boiled down to Vassily Kuragin’s emotional outburst as Count Bezukhov dies in War & Peace: “How often we sin. how much we deceive. and all for what?… All will end in death. all! Death is awful.”

This is the first time we have offered a human skull for sale and possibly the last