They are all dead. And yet, they all look at me. Men, women, children. Each with their  “strawberry” around their neck. Dominant – and almost exclusive – colors: black and white. Sometimes tiny red spots (velvet of a fabric, fibers of an exotic carpet, leather bindings of a thick book, pearl of a Murano necklace). Hand on hip, or placed on breast. The straight gaze, always, fixating, scrutinizing, across centuries and space. They are all dead, and yet they look at me. All of them, nailed to the wall of this long room at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. Vestiges of lives of which even the skeletons are lost, whose names have disappeared. Long accumulation of “Portrait(s) of an anonymous person”. Melancholic spouses? Desperate lovers? Black satin or white petticoat? White silk or black coat? Lace, everywhere. Dutch aristocrat or Brabant ecclesiastic? Some smile, others carry unfathomable sadness. On the floor that creaks with each of my steps, they follow me with their gaze, and I don’t take my eyes off them. Black hat on their heads or in their hands, white headdress enclosing masses of blond hair, they spend their eternity with their eyes wide open. A small people who will never age, frozen forever in oil paint, on a wooden panel, under the brush of the Flemish painter…

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Philippe Charlier, MD, PhD, LittD, is a forensic practitioner and anthropologist. He works on representations of the human bodies, and rituals related to diseases and death. He loves words, and more.