In the chapel of San Pietro in Macra, Val Maria, in the province of Cuneo, there is a curious depiction of the Dance Macabre dating back to the 15th century.
The fresco depicts a procession of couples formed by a living and a dead person. This symbolic image was meant to remind us of the inevitability of death and the equality of all in the face of it. Couples are made up of a skeleton that laces up in the dance to various characters from each social class.
Dancing skeletons assume acrobat poses: there are those who use stilts and those who hold severed heads, those who crawl on the ground and those who do somersaults.
After a narrator's introduction, the dialogues (written in Occitan) develop between death and a pope, followed by the emperor, cardinal, bishop, soldier, abbot, moneylender, friar, and peasant.
