The Dance of Death

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The Dance of Death

by Hans Holbein, with an

introductory note by

Austin Dobson


  New York
  SCOTT-THAW COMPANY
  mcmiii



  Copyright, 1903, by
  SCOTT-THAW COMPANY

  _The Heintzemann Press, Boston_






THE DANCE OF DEATH

=The Book=


"_Les Simulachres & Historiees Faces de la Mort avtant elegamtment
pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginees._" This may be Englished
as follows: _The Images and Storied Aspects of Death, as elegantly
delineated as [they are] ingeniously imagined._ Such is the literal
title of the earliest edition of the famous book now familiarly known
as "_Holbein's Dance of Death._" It is a small _quarto_, bearing on
its title-page, below the French words above quoted, a nondescript
emblem with the legend _Vsus me Genuit_, and on an open book, _Gnothe
seauton_. Below this comes again, "_A Lyon, Soubz l'escu de Coloigne_:
M. D. XXXVIII," while at the end of the volume is the imprint
"_Excvdebant Lvgdvni Melchoir et Gaspar Trechsel fratres: 1538_,"--the
Trechsels being printers of German origin, who had long been established
at Lyons. There is a verbose "Epistre" or Preface in French to the
"_moult reuerende Abbesse du religieux conuent S. Pierre de Lyon,
Madame Iehanne de Touszele_," otherwise the Abbess of Saint Pierre les
Nonnains, a religious house containing many noble and wealthy ladies,
and the words, "_Salut d'un vray Zele_," which conclude the dedicatory
heading, are supposed to reveal indirectly the author of the "Epistre"
itself, namely, Jean de Vauzelles, Pastor of St. Romain and Prior of
Monrottier, one of three famous literary brothers in the city on the
Rhone, whose motto was "_D'un vray Zelle_." After the Preface comes
"_Diuerses Tables de Mort, non painctes, mais extraictes de l'escripture
saincte, colorees par Docteurs Ecclesiastiques, & umbragees par
Philosophes_." Then follow the cuts, forty-one in number, each having
its text from the Latin Bible above it, and below, its quatrain in
French, this latter being understood to be from the pen of one Gilles
Corozet. To the cuts succeed various makeweight Appendices of a didactic
and hortatory character, the whole being wound up by a profitable
discourse, _De la Necessite de la Mort qui ne laisse riens estre
pardurable_. Various editions ensued to this first one of 1538, the next
or second of 1542 (in which Corozet's verses were translated into Latin
by Luther's brother-in-law, George Oemmel or Aemilius), being put forth
by Jean and Francois Frellon, into whose hands the establishment of the
Trechsels had fallen. There were subsequent issues in 1545, 1547, 1549,
1554, and 1562. To the issues of 1545 and 1562 a few supplementary
designs were added, some of which have no special bearing upon the
general theme, although attempts, more or less ingenious, have been made
to connect them with the text. After 1562 no addition was made to the
plates.


=The Artist=

From the date of the _editio princeps_ it might be supposed that the
designs were executed at or about 1538--the year of its publication. But
this is not the case; and there is good evidence that they were not only
designed but actually cut on the wood some eleven years before the book
itself was published. There are, in fact, several sets of impressions
in the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, the Basle Museum, the Imperial
Library at Paris, and the Grand Ducal Cabinet at Carlsruhe, all of which
correspond with each other, and are believed to be engraver's proofs
from the original blocks. These, which include every cut in the edition
of 1538, except "The Astrologer," would prove little of themselves as
to the date of execution. But, luckily, there exists in the Cabinet at
Berlin a set of coarse enlarged drawings in Indian ink, on brownish
paper, of twenty-three of the series. These are in circular form; and
were apparently intended as sketches for glass painting. That they are
copied from the woodcuts is demonstrable, first, because they are not
reversed as they would have been if they were the originals; and,
secondly, because one of them, No. 36 ("The Duchess"), repeats the
conjoined "H.L." on the bed, which initials are held to be the monogram
of the woodcutter, and not to be part of the original design. The Berlin
drawings must therefore have been executed subsequently to the woodcuts;
and as one of them, that representing the Emperor, is dated "1527,"
we get a date before which both the woodcuts, and the designs for the
woodcuts, must have been prepared. It is generally held that they were
so prepared _circa_ 1524 and 1525, the date of the Peasants' War, of the
state of feeling excited by which they exhibit evident traces. In the
Preface to this first edition, certain ambiguous expressions, to which
we shall presently refer, led some of the earlier writers on the subject
to doubt as to the designer of the series.