The Dance of Death

ath, 1538.-Doubts as to any prior edition.-Dedication to the edition of 1538.-Mr. Ottley's opinion of it examine

the Dance of Death that the latter is seldom mentioned w

who have spoken of the subject as it appeared in any shape in the city of Basle. The opinions of those who have either supposed or stated that Holbein even retouched or repaired the old painting at Basle, are entitled to no credit whatever, unacco

d on the walls of a house where he used to drink; yet so worn out that very little is now to be seen, except shapes and postures, but these shew the exquisiteness of the hand." It is much to be regretted that this painting was not in a state to have enabled the bishop to have been more particular in his description. He then mentions the older Dance, which he places "along t

, and its difference from the other. Charles Patin, an earlier authority than the two preceding travellers, and who was at Basle in 1671, informs us that strangers behold, with a considerable degree of pleasure, the walls of a house at the corner of a little street in the above town, which are covered from top to bottom with paintings by Holbein, that would have done honour to the commands of a great prince, whils

n. Some of the writers on engraving have manifested their usual inaccuracy on the subject of Holbein's Dance of Peasants. Joubert says it has been engraved, but that it is "a peu près introuvable."[97] Huber likewise makes them extremely rare, and adds, without the slightest authority, that Holbein engraved them.[98] There is, however, no doubt that his beautiful pencil was employed on this subject in various ways, of which the following specimens are worthy of being recorded. 1. In a set of initial letters frequently used in books printed at Basle and elsewhere. 2.

by several writers on the walls, inside and outside, of houses, but likewise in the fish-market; on the walls of the church-yard of St. Peter; and even in the cathedral

h slight exception, a series of admirable groups of persons of various characters, among whom Death is appropriately introduced as an emblem of man's mortality. It is of equal celebrity with the Macaber Dance, but in design and execution of considerable superiority, and with which the

val. As to the designs of these truly elegant prints, no one who is at all skilled in the knowledge of Holbein's style and manner of grouping his figures, would hesitate immediately to ascribe them to that artist. Some persons have imagined that they had actually discovered the portrait of Holbein in the subject of the nun and her lover; but the painter, whoever he may have been, is more likely to be represented in the last cut as one of the supporters of t

r edition of the present dissertation, he remarks, that "Holbein's title to the Dance of Death would not have been called in question, had the ingenious author of the dissertation on that subject been acquainted with the German edition." This gentleman seems, however, to have inadvertently forgotten a former opinion which he had given in one of his lectures, where he says, "The scrupulous precision, the high finish, and the Titianesque colour of Hans Holbein would make the least part of his excellence, if his right to that series of emblematic groups known under the name of Holbein's Dance of Death had not, of late, been too successfully disputed." M. Fuseli would have rendered some service to this question by favouring us with an explicit account of the above German edition, if he really intended by it a complete work; but it is most likely that he adverted to some separate impressions of the cuts with printed inscriptions on them, but which are only the titles of the respective characters or subjects. To such impressions M. Malpé has certainly

hich had appeared in the edition of 1538, except that of the astrologer. Over each is the nam

e subjects. In an edition that soon afterwards appeared, these French verses were translated into Latin by George ?mylius, a German divine; and in another edition, pub

rtis express? ab optimo pictore Johanne Holbein cum epigrammatibus Geo. ?mylii, excus? Francofurti et Lugduni apud Frellonios, quorum editio plures habet picturas. Vidi etiam cum metris Gallicis et Germanicis si bene memini."[100] But Gesner writes from imperf

always the best; a great deal depending on the care and skill with which they were taken from the blocks, and not a little on the quality of the paper. As they were most likely engraved at Basle by an excellent artist, of whom more will be said hereafter, and at the instance of the Lyons booksellers or publishers, it is very probable that a few impressions would be taken off with German titles only for the use of the people of Basle, or other persons using the German language. Proofs might also be wanted for the

iné] such elegant designs, greatly exceeding all other patterns of the kind, in like manner as the paintings of Apelles and Zeuxis have surpassed those of modern times. He observes that these funereal histories, accompanied by their grave descriptions in rhyme, induce the admiring spectators to behold the dead as alive, and the living as dead; which leads him to believe that Death, apprehensive lest this admirable painter should exhibit him so lively that he would no longer be feared as Death, and that he should thereby become immortal himself, had hastened his days to an end, and thus prevented him from completing many other figures, which he had already designed, especially that of the carman crushed and wounded beneath his demolished waggon, the wheels and horses of which are so frightfully overthrown that as much horror is excited in beholding their downfall, as pleasure in contemplating the lickerishness of one of

e mistaken as conveying any other sense than that of originality in design. There cannot be words of plainer import than those which describe the painter, as he is expressly called, delineating the subjects, and leaving several of them unfinished: and whoever the artist might have been, it clearly appears that he was not living in 1538. Now it is well known th

der his direction, to engrave the designs in wood, and whose name, there appears reason to believe, was Hans Lutzenberger.[102] Holbein, I am of opinion, had, shortly before the year 1538, sold the forty-one blocks which had been some time previously executed, to the booksellers of Lyons, and had at the same time given him a promise of others which he had lately designed, as a continuation of the series, and were then in the hands of the wood-engraver. The wood-engraver, I suppose, died before he had completed his task, and the correspondent of the bookseller, who had probably deferred his publication in expectation of the new blocks, wrote from Basle to Lyons to inform his friend of the disappointment occasioned by the artist's death. It is probable that this information was not given very circumstan

had German verses underneath, and texts of Scripture above, in addition to the titles; a fact, he adds, not now to be ascertained, as the margins are clipped on the sides and at bottom. He says, it is greatly to be regretted that the blocks were never taken off with due diligence and good printing ink, after they got into the hands of the Lyons booksellers, and then introduces into his page two fac-similes of these cuts so admirably copied as to be almost undistinguishable from the originals.[104] One may, indeed, regret with Mr. Ottley the general carelessness of the old printers in their mode of taking off impressions from blocks of wood when introducing them into their books, and which is so very unequally practised that, as already observed, the impressions are often clearer and more distinct in later than

iginality of invention, and not the mere act of copying, if he had referred to an engraver on wood, whom he would not have dignified with the appellation of a painter on whom he was bestowing the highest possible eulogium. There would also have been much less occasion for the author's hyperbolical fears on the part of Death in the case of an engraver, than in that of a painter. He has stated that the rainbow subject, meaning probably that of the Last Judgment, was left unfinished; but it appears among the engravings in his edition. He must, therefore, have referred to a painting, with which likewise the expression "bold shadows and perspective," seem better to accord than with a slight engraving on wo

t of rank and genius, be placed below the painter or designer; and it is at the same time remarkable that the name of Holbein is not adverted to in any of the early and ge

did not die in or before 1538, it would follow, of course, that the painter was the person adverted to in the dedication, and who consequently could not be Holbein. It becomes necessary, therefore, to endeavour at

nown to have visited Lyons, a royal city at that time eminent in art of every kind, and especially in those of printing and engraving on wood; as the many beautiful volumes published at that place, and embellished with

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he might have begun the work in question, and have died before he could complete it, and that the Lyons publishers might afterwards have employed Holbein to finish what was left undone, as well as to make designs for additional subjects which appeared in the subsequent editions. Thus would Holbein be so connected with the work as to obtain in future such notice as would constitute him by general report the real inventor of i