This article examines the development of a new role for Personified-Death that emerged in early Renaissance illustrations of the ‘Triumph of Death’ in Petrarch’s Triumphi. Originally the figure of Death was the Reaper who gathered sinners for an apocalyptic harvest, but through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Death took on a new role presiding over peaceful deathbeds and the passage to a justified heavenly reward. The new imagery emerged from a syncretic tradition, marrying secular and devotional poetry, theology, Latin literature and devotional texts such as the ars moriendi to produce a mortality that reassured viewers of their salvation. These different Deaths were available to different audiences and featured different participants: one contemporary, collective and frightening; the other, classical, individual and comforting. Death came for all, but not all deaths were the same.

The article presents examples of reflective looking that were encouraged by theological teaching and poetic traditions, and assisted viewers in rich contemplative readings. This allowed for interpretations of the images that embraced a wide semantic field with connotations well beyond the literal iconographic representations.

An important aspect of the shift in the role of death at this time is the development of beliefs about the beatific vision in the early Renaissance. Images of Personified-Death ushering donor-figures into the presence of the Virgin Mary suggests that, at least in some circumstances, images of donors-saints-and-Virgin-Mary, may be interpreted not as pleas for mercy (as they are often understood) but instead as representations of the successful completion of the good Christian’s journey accessing the beatific vision via this new Death-figure.