Erasmus, Terminus and a missing skull

Abstract

From the 1510s onwards, Erasmus used the image of the Roman god Terminus together with his famous personal motto (concedo nulli) as a private emblem, which became part of his consciously shaped self-representation. According to his own explanation, he saw it as a symbol of mortality. The study attempts to unravel Erasmus' real and apparently even beyond death enduring relationship with this particular emblem through some of the texts of the oeuvre, his personal objects and his portraits made by different artists of the time.