Tiberius ontsnapt aan de dood 1736 - 1775

Jan Caspar Philips etched this print, “Tiberius Escaping Death,” in the 18th century, depicting a scene of sudden peril during a Roman banquet. The collapsing vault above becomes a symbolic weight, embodying the unpredictable nature of fate. Observe the gestures of alarm—arms raised in defense and faces contorted in fear. These are not unique to Philips; consider similar expressions of terror in ancient Roman frescoes or Renaissance depictions of the Last Judgment. Such gestures transcend time, echoing through art history as universal markers of human vulnerability. The motif of a collapsing structure appears in varied contexts, from the Tower of Babel to modern disaster imagery. Psychologically, these images tap into deep-seated anxieties about instability and mortality. What this print evokes is how we perpetually revisit and re-imagine our primal fears, continually reshaping ancient archetypes to reflect contemporary concerns.