Crown of Immortality

The Crown of Immortality is a literary and religious metaphor traditionally represented in art first as a laurel wreath and later as a symbolic circle of stars (often a crown, tiara, halo or aureola). The Crown appears in a number of Baroque iconographic and allegoric works of art to indicate the wearer's immortality.

In ancient Egypt, the crown of justification was a wreath placed on the deceased to represent victory over death in the afterlife, in emulation of the resurrecting god Osiris. It was made of various materials including laurel, palm, feathers, papyrus, roses, or precious metals, with numerous examples represented on the Fayum mummy portraits of the Roman Imperial period.

In ancient Greece, a wreath of laurel or olive was awarded to victorious athletes and later poets. Among the Romans, generals celebrating a formal triumph wore a laurel wreath, an honor that during the Empire was restricted to the Imperial family. The placing of the wreath was often called a "crowning", and its relation to immortality was problematic; it was supposed to secure the wearer immortality in the form of enduring fame, but the triumphator was also reminded of his place within the mortal world: in the traditional tableaux, an accompanying slave whispered continually in the general's ear Memento mori, "Remember you are mortal". Funerary wreaths of gold leaf were associated particularly with initiates into the mystery religions.

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