The vainglory of not dying
Submitted by adm on Thu, 08/10/2026 - 22:39At the Paris Salon of 1850, the great realist painter Gustave Courbet presented his masterpiece: "Burial at Ornans". Beyond the scandal it caused by treating, in format and style, as a history painting what was nothing more than a common event, a burial in a rural village, the piece shows in all its crudeness the farewell of the village’s inhabitants to one of their neighbours, possibly the artist's maternal grandfather. You only have to stop and look carefully at the faces of the characters portrayed to realize the seriousness of the event.














