The encyclopedia is dedicated to the theme of death - one of the most ancient and widespread in the history of art. The iconography of death and its symbolic opposite - resurrection and rebirth - is shown through eight separate themes: violent death as a result of war and murder; images and symbols common in religious and secular traditions; the conflict of love and death, Eros and Thanatos; relations between the living and the deceased, as well as ceremonials designed by people to express grief; depictions of death in all its forms and guises; the cult of the dead and monuments created by the living; travels to the other world and to the afterlife.