Francesco's Triumph of Death (1446) was a 16-foot-high fresco in Pisa, Italy, that depicts the triumph of death as an allegory, not a literal event. The fresco is composed of three tiers, a composition typical of the medieval and early Renaissance traditions that dominated the period.
The heavenly spheres are shown at the top of the register. The celestial world with the heavens, God the Father, Christ the Judge, the Virgin Mary, and the Apostles. Below the spheres are God's heavenly armies who are ready to take the souls of the blessed. Beneath the celestial spheres, in the middle tier of the fresco, Death leads a macabre procession of victims on horseback, including popes, kings, queens, and members of the clergy, all of whom succumb to death. The third and final tier of the fresco shows the corruption of human bodies during the various stages of decomposition, with skeletons and rotting corpses interred, strewn, and scattered among the landscape.
The "triumph" in Triumph of Death is not just a representation of the inevitability of death, but also of the transience of earthly achievements and possessions, as evidenced by the decay of everything represented in the fresco (including the Church), but especially the bodies.