Memento Mori
[Janko (Mihael) Belaj]
Zagreb, 25th September 2025
Photograph on canvas exhibited at the group exhibition of the ULUPUH Department of Photography “Like the Old Masters”.
Width: 70cm, height: 50cm, depth: 2cm.
Price: 500 € + shipping
This theme (vanitas / memento mori) first captured my interest in early youth, when I began photographing Baroque painting for my late mother, the art historian Marija Mirković-Belaj. We had intended to work on it together within the context of Baroque painting in Croatia, yet it somehow always managed to “slip away” from us. I was delighted by this exhibition of the ULUPUH Department for Photography, as it finally gave me the opportunity to engage with the subject — in a way that goes far beyond the documentary approach I had envisioned some forty years ago. I therefore dedicate this work to my mother, as a kind of hommage to her iconological and iconographic passion.
Instead of artist’s statement:
[Matthew 6:19–21]
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal;
but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
[Revelation 12:7–9]
And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.
The dragon and his angels fought back,
but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), 1989