The Triumph of Death (detail)Buonamico Buffalmacco

This fresco detail (1336–41) shows a dead man lying on a bier while a naked infant soul rises from his chest toward a red celestial beam. Painted by Buffalmacco within a larger cycle on death and judgment, it articulates medieval belief in the soul’s departure at the moment of death. The upward movement integrates hope for salvation into a scene otherwise dominated by fear and reckoning.