The traditional European symbol of death is the skeleton with a scythe, toothy, faceless, but curiously fragile. Recently, a young, African art student at Uganda’s Makerere College set out to ...

At first glance, the square-shaped symbols looked like swastikas — a symbol Hitler’s Nazis made synonymous with death in World War II. But, as it turns out, they weren’t swastikas at all.

They included symbols of death (a skull, a snuffed candle) to present the theme in a new way. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 'The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe' ...