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Van Gogh's Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette combines macabre imagery and dark humor. Painted while he was studying at Antwerp, it depicts a plain skeleton rendered bizarre and ironic by the presence of a burning cigarette. Some read it as a joke, some as a joke about mortality, but its stark contrast and unwholesome glow betray Van Gogh's humor as well as his interest in life, death, and the absurd.

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Bouguereau's Dante and Virgil depicts a moment of violence in Dante's Inferno, where two souls battle brutally in Hell while Dante and his guide look on. The twisted bodies, harsh faces, and raw power display the savage tendency of sin and eternal punishment. This is not typical of the soft and idealized images painted by Bouguereau otherwise, as the painting is harsh and disturbing, transforming classical beauty into an environment of chaos and moral judgement.

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Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel depicts Lucifer at the instant following his fall from heaven. With his muscular body, winged form, and weeping eyes, Cabanel depicts the fallen archangel as beautiful and pitiful. In contrast to subsequent representations of unremitting evil, this painting highlights the emotional anguish of rebellion, loss, and rejection. The angel sits pensive, torn between pride and despair, reflecting the duality of defiance and sorrow. Cabanel's painting encourages us to view the fallen angel as a malefactor, yet also as a symbol of human frailty and yearning, forever exiled but hauntingly familiar.

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Francisco Goya's chilling Saturn Devouring His Son shows the Roman god devouring one of his sons, frightened by a prediction that he would be deposed. Painted straight onto the walls of his house in his later years, the picture is part of Goya's "Black Paintings," a collection rich in shadows and desperation. The vicious violence is not merely mythological; it is the artist's vision of an awful world ravaged by war, tyranny, and the viciousness of power. Goya's Saturn is not so much a god as a monster, mad with fear, and this painting is one of the most disturbing images ever created in art.

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Edvard Munch's "The Scream" freezes raw human fear in a single, indelible moment. The spinning sky reflects the turmoil within the figure at the center, who wails in anguish as society streams by outside. Executed at a time when Munch was thinking about illness, death, and inner turmoil, the painting expresses the general sense of existential fear. It is not merely a scream; it is the scream of mankind, ringing down through time, reminding us that fear and suffering cannot be separated from the condition of mankind.