Poort tot begraafplaats bij de Westerkerk 1631

This is an undated, anonymous print titled "Poort tot begraafplaats bij de Westerkerk", depicting a gate to a cemetery near the Westerkerk, or Western Church. Consider the Western Church, a site for both celebration and mourning, where life events such as baptisms and marriages occur alongside the remembrance of the dead. The gate is adorned with skulls, symbols of mortality, but also perhaps of life. The Western Church is not just a place of worship, but a repository of history, a place of reflection on the passage of time and the ever-present reality of death. What stories do these bones tell? How do we negotiate our own mortality within spaces that honor both life and death? This print invites us to contemplate the relationship between the sacred and the profane, the eternal and the ephemeral.