The Apotheosis of War

Vasily Vereshchagin was a Russian battle painter who had served in the tsar's army in Central Asia. He painted this after seeing similar mounds of skulls in the aftermath of Ottoman raids. The picture shows a pyramid of human skulls in a scorched landscape, circled by crows. The frame is inscribed in Russian: 'Dedicated to all great conquerors — past, present, and to come.' It is one of the most explicit anti-war statements in nineteenth- century painting. Vereshchagin died in 1904 aboard the battleship Petropavlovsk when it was sunk by a Japanese mine at Port Arthur. He had gone to paint the Russo-Japanese War. Now at State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow @tretyakovgallery