The French diplomat Jean de Dinteville who is shown on the left-hand side of this painting uttered this phrase, but of course he said this in Latin which was, “Memento mori”.  We all have to go sometime as death is inevitable.  In William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet Capulet says, “Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.”  Juliet associates Romeo with a light that illuminates the darkness.  If Juliet dies, she wants Romeo’s body cut up into little stars, so that love will remain in the world.  These stars represent both the timeless quality of the couple’s love and their fate as “star-cross’d lovers” because one…