"Sàpiens" is a Catalan magazine about historical dissemination.
This illustration was made for the "Lost Jobs" section, in which each month the magazine talks about a job that no longer exists. The title of the article was "Funeral mime: laughing at the dead and the one who watches over him" written by Anna-Priscila Magriñà.
In this case the article was about the "funeral mime". In ancient Rome, when an emperor died, a mime artist was hired to imitate the deceased and accompanied the funeral. The mime wore masks, the same clothes and imitated expressions of the emperor; the objective was to make people laugh and downplay solemnity to the event.
For the illustration I used the classical vase motif as a basis to graphically describe a funeral scene. Some metaphors can be seen such as the sun setting or the withered laurel wreath. It is also accompanied by a roman seal that refers to the "memento mori".
