Chapter I: Front Matter

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 & Historiées Faces de la Mort avtant elegamtment pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées._" 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 Zèle_," 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, colorées par Docteurs Ecclesiastiques, & umbragées 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 François 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. But the later researches of Wornum and Woltmann, of M. Paul Mantz and, more recently, of Mr. W. J. Linton leave no doubt that they were really drawn by the artist to whom they have always been traditionally assigned, to wit, Hans Holbein the younger. He was resident in Basle up to the autumn of 1526, before which time, according to the above argument, the drawings must have been produced; he had already designed an Alphabet of Death; and, moreover, on the walls of the cemetery of the Dominican monastery at Basle there was a famous wall-painting of the Dance of Death, which would be a perpetual stimulus to any resident artist. Finally, and this is perhaps the most important consideration of all, the designs are in Holbein's manner.

=The Woodcutter=

But besides revealing an inventor of the highest order, the _Dance of Death_ also discloses an interpreter in wood of signal, and even superlative, ability. The designs are cut--to use the word which implies the employment of the knife as opposed to that of the graver--in a manner which has never yet been excelled. In this matter there could be no better judge than Mr. W. J. Linton; and he says that nothing, either by knife or by graver, is of higher quality than these woodcuts. Yet the woodcutter's very name was for a long time doubtful, and even now the particulars which we possess with regard to him are scanty and inconclusive. That he was dead when the Trechsels published the book in 1538, must be inferred from the "Epistre" of Jean de Vauzelles, since that "Epistre" expressly refers to "_la mort de celluy, qui nous en a icy imaginé si elegantes figures_"; and without entering into elaborate enquiry as to the exact meaning of "_imaginer_" in sixteenth-century French, it is obvious that, although the deceased is elsewhere loosely called "_painctre_," this title cannot refer to Holbein, who was so far from being dead that he survived until 1543. The only indication of the woodcutter's name is supplied by the monogram, "HL" upon the bedstead in No. 36 ("The Duchess"); and these initials have been supposed to indicate one Hans Lutzelburger, or Hans of Luxemburg, "otherwise Franck," a form-cutter ("formschneider"), whose full name is to be found attached to the so-called "Little Dance of Death," an alphabet by Holbein, impressions of which are in the British Museum. His signature ("H. L. F. 1522") is also found appended to another alphabet; to a cut of a fight in a forest, dated also 1522; and to an engraved title-page in a German New Testament of the year following. This is all we know with certainty concerning his work, though the investigations of Dr. Édouard His have established the fact that a "formschneider" named Hans, who had business transactions with the Trechsels of Lyons, had died at Basle before June, 1526; and it is conjectured, though absolute proof is not forthcoming, that this must have been the "H. L.," or Hans of Luxemburg, who cut Holbein's designs upon the wood. In any case, unless we must assume another woodcutter of equal merit, it is probable that the same man cut the signed Alphabet in the British Museum and the initialed _Dance of Death_. But why the cuts of the latter, which, as we have shown above, were printed _circa_ 1526, were not published at Lyons until 1538; and why Holbein's name was withheld in the Preface to the book of that year, are still unexplained. The generally accepted supposition is that motives of timidity, arising from the satirical and fearlessly unsparing character of the designs, may be answerable both for delay in the publication and mystification in the "Preface." And if intentional mystification be admitted, the doors of enquiry, after three hundred and fifty years, are practically sealed to the critical picklock.

=Other Reproductions=

The _Dance of Death_ has been frequently copied. Mr. W. J. Linton enumerates a Venice reproduction of 1545; and a set (enlarged) by Jobst Dienecker of Augsburg in 1554. Then there is the free copy, once popular with our great grandfathers, by Bewick's younger brother John, which Hodgson of Newcastle published in 1789 under the title of _Emblems of Mortality_. Wenceslaus Hollar etched thirty of the designs in 1651, and in 1788 forty-six of them were etched by David Deuchar. In 1832 they were reproduced upon stone with great care by Joseph Schlotthauer, Professor in the Academy of Fine Arts at Munich; and these were reissued in this country in 1849 by John Russell Smith. They have also been rendered in photo-lithography for an edition issued by H. Noel Humphreys, in 1868; and for the Holbein Society in 1879. In 1886, Dr. F. Lippmann edited for Mr. Quaritch a set of reproductions of the engraver's proofs in the Berlin Museum; and the _editio princeps_ has been facsimiled by one of the modern processes for Hirth of Munich, as vol. x. of the Liebhaber-Bibliothek, 1884.

=The Present Issue=

The copies given in the present issue are impressions from the blocks engraved in 1833 for Douce's _Holbein's Dance of Death_. They are the best imitations in wood, says Mr. Linton. It is of course true, as he also points out, that a copy with the graver can never quite faithfully follow an original which has been cut with the knife,--more especially, it may be added, when the cutter is a supreme craftsman like him of Luxemburg. But against etched, lithographed, phototyped and otherwise-processed copies, these of Messrs. Bonner and John Byfield have one incontestable advantage: they are honest attempts to repeat by the same method,--that is, in wood,--the original and incomparable woodcuts of Hans Lutzelburger.

THE DANCE OF DEATH

(CHANT ROYAL, AFTER HOLBEIN)[1]

"_Contra vim Mortis_
_Non est medicamen in hortis._"

He is the despots' Despot. All must bide,
Later or soon, the message of his might;
Princes and potentates their heads must hide,
Touched by the awful sigil of his right;
Beside the Kaiser he at eve doth wait
And pours a potion in his cup of state;
The stately Queen his bidding must obey;
No keen-eyed Cardinal shall him affray;
And to the Dame that wantoneth he saith--
"Let be, Sweet-heart, to junket and to play."
There is no king more terrible than Death.

The lusty Lord, rejoicing in his pride,
He draweth down; before the armèd Knight
With jingling bridle-rein he still doth ride;
He crosseth the strong Captain in the fight;
The Burgher grave he beckons from debate;
He hales the Abbot by his shaven pate,
Nor for the Abbess' wailing will delay;
No bawling Mendicant shall say him nay;
E'en to the pyx the Priest he followeth,
Nor can the Leech his chilling finger stay ...
There is no king more terrible than Death.

All things must bow to him. And woe betide
The Wine-bibber,--the Roisterer by night;
Him the feast-master, many bouts defied,
Him 'twixt the pledging and the cup shall smite;
Woe to the Lender at usurious rate,
The hard Rich Man, the hireling Advocate;
Woe to the Judge that selleth right for pay;
Woe to the Thief that like a beast of prey
With creeping tread the traveller harryeth:--
These, in their sin, the sudden sword shall slay ...
There is no king more terrible than Death.

He hath no pity,--nor will be denied.
When the low hearth is garnishèd and bright,
Grimly he flingeth the dim portal wide,
And steals the Infant in the Mother's sight;
He hath no pity for the scorned of fate:--
He spares not Lazarus lying at the gate,
Nay, nor the Blind that stumbleth as he may;
Nay, the tired Ploughman,--at the sinking ray,--
In the last furrow,--feels an icy breath,
And knows a hand hath turned the team astray ...
There is no king more terrible than Death.

He hath no pity. For the new-made Bride,
Blithe with the promise of her life's delight,
That wanders gladly by her Husband's side,
He with the clatter of his drum doth fright;
He scares the Virgin at the convent grate;

The Maid half-won, the lover passionate;
He hath no grace for weakness and decay:
The tender Wife, the Widow bent and gray,
The feeble Sire whose footstep faltereth,--
All these he leadeth by the lonely way ...
There is no king more terrible than Death.

ENVOY.

Youth, for whose ear and monishing of late,
I sang of Prodigals and lost estate,
Have thou thy joy of living and be gay;
But know not less that there must come a day,--
Aye, and perchance e'en now it hasteneth,--
When thine own heart shall speak to thee and say,--
There is no king more terrible than Death.

1877. A. D.

[Footnote 1: This Chant Royal of the King of Terrors is--with Mr. AUSTIN DOBSON'S consent--here reprinted from his _Collected Poems_, 1896.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

N.B.--The German titles are in general modernized from those
which appear above the engraver's proofs. The numerals are
those of the cuts.

THE CREATION I
_Die Schöpfung aller Ding._

Eve is taken from the side of Adam.

THE TEMPTATION II
"_Adam Eua im Paradyss._"

Eve, having received an apple from the serpent,
prompts Adam to gather more.

THE EXPULSION III
"_Vsstribung Ade Eue._"

Adam and Eve, preceded by Death, playing on a
beggar's lyre or hurdy-gurdy, are driven by the
angel from Eden.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL IV
_Adam baut die Erden._

Adam, aided by Death, tills the earth. Eve,
with a distaff, suckles Cain in the background.

A CEMETERY V
_Gebein aller Menschen._

A crowd of skeletons, playing on horns, trumpets,
and the like, summon mankind to the grave.

THE POPE VI
_Der Päpst._

The Pope (Leo X.) with Death at his side, crowns
an Emperor, who kisses his foot. Another Death,
in a cardinal's hat, is among the assistants.

THE EMPEROR VII
_Der Kaiser._

The Emperor (Maximilian I.) rates his minister
for injustice to a suitor. But even in the act
Death discrowns him.

THE KING VIII
_Der König._

The King (Francis I.) sits at feast under
a baldachin sprinkled with _fleurs-de-lis_.
Death, as a cup-bearer, pours his last draught.

THE CARDINAL IX
_Der Cardinal._

Death lifts off the Cardinal's hat as he is
handing a letter of indulgence to a rich man.
Luther's opponent, Cardinal Cajetan, is supposed
to be represented.

THE EMPRESS X
_Die Kaiserinn._

The Empress, walking with her women, is
intercepted by a female Death, who conducts her
to an open grave.

THE QUEEN XI
_Die Königinn._

Death, in the guise of a court-jester, drags
away the Queen as she is leaving her palace.

THE BISHOP XII
_Der Bischof._

The sun is setting, and Death leads the aged
Bishop from the sorrowing shepherds of his
flock.

THE DUKE XIII
_Der Herzog._

The Duke turns pitilessly from a beggar-woman
and her child. Meanwhile Death, fantastically
crowned, lays hands on him.

THE ABBOT XIV
_Der Abt._

Death, having despoiled the Abbot of mitre
and crozier, hales him along unwilling, and
threatening his enemy with his breviary.

THE ABBESS XV
_Die Abtissin._

Death, in a wreath of flags, pulls away the
Abbess by her scapulary in sight of a shrieking
nun.

THE NOBLEMAN XVI
_Der Edelmann._

Death drags the resisting Nobleman towards
a bier in the background.

THE CANON, OR PREBENDARY XVII
_Der Domherr._

The Canon, with his falconer, page, and
jester, enters the church door. Death shows
him that his sands have run.

THE JUDGE XVIII
_Der Richter._

Death withdraws the Judge's staff as he takes
a bribe from a rich suitor.

THE ADVOCATE XIX
_Der Fürsprach._

Death comes upon him in the street while he is
being feed by a rich client.

THE COUNSELLOR, OR SENATOR XX
_Der Rathsherr._

The Counsellor, prompted by a devil, is
absorbed by a nobleman, and turns unheeding
from a poor suppliant. But Death, with glass
and spade, is waiting at his feet.

THE PREACHER XXI
_Der Predicant._

Death, in a stole, stands in the pulpit
behind the fluent Preacher, and prepares to
strike him down with a jaw-bone.

THE PRIEST, OR PASTOR XXII
_Der Pfarrherr._

He carries the host to a sick person. But
Death precedes him as his sacristan.

THE MENDICANT FRIAR XXIII
_Der Mönch._

Death seizes him just as his begging box and
bag are filled.

THE NUN XXIV
_Die Nonne._

The young Nun kneels at the altar, but turns
to her lover who plays upon a lute. Death
meantime, as a hideous old hag, extinguishes
the altar candles.

THE OLD WOMAN XXV
_Das Altweib._

"_Melior est mors quam vita_" to the aged
woman who crawls gravewards with her bone
rosary while Death makes music in the van.

THE PHYSICIAN XXVI
_Der Arzt._

Death brings him a hopeless patient, and
bids him cure himself.

THE ASTROLOGER XXVII
(_See p. 10, l. 12._)

He contemplates a pendent sphere. But Death
thrusts a skull before his eyes.

THE RICH MAN XXVIII
_Der Reichmann._

Death finds him at his pay-table and seizes
the money.

THE MERCHANT XXIX
_Der Kaufmann._

Death arrests him among his newly-arrived bales.

THE SHIPMAN XXX
_Der Schiffmann._

Death breaks the mast of the ship, and the crew
are in extremity.

THE KNIGHT XXXI
_Der Ritter._

Death, in cuirass and chain-mail, runs him
through the body.

THE COUNT XXXII
_Der Graf._

Death, as a peasant with a flail, lifts away
his back-piece.

THE OLD MAN XXXIII
_Der Altmann._

Death, playing on a dulcimer, leads him into
his grave.

THE COUNTESS XXXIV
_Die Grafinn._

Death helps her at her tiring by decorating
her with a necklet of dead men's bones.

THE NOBLE LADY, OR BRIDE XXXV
_Die Edelfrau._

"_Me et te sola mors separabit_"--says the
motto. And Death already dances before her.

THE DUCHESS XXXVI
_Die Herzoginn._

Death seizes her in bed, while his fellow plays
the fiddle.

THE PEDLAR XXXVII
_Der Kramer._

Death stops him on the road with his wares at
his back.

THE PLOUGHMAN XXXVIII
_Der Ackermann._

Death runs at the horses' sides as the sun
sinks, and the furrows are completed.

THE YOUNG CHILD XXXIX
_Das Junge Kind._

As the meagre cottage meal is preparing, Death
steals the youngest child.

THE LAST JUDGMENT XL
_Das jüngste Gericht._

"_Omnes stabimus ante tribunal Domini._"

THE ESCUTCHEON OF DEATH XLI
_Die Wappen des Todes._

The supporters represent Holbein and his wife.

[_Added in later editions_]

THE SOLDIER XLII

Death, armed only with a bone and shield,
fights with the Soldier on the field of battle.

THE GAMESTER XLIII

Death and the Devil seize upon the Gambler at
his cards.

THE DRUNKARD XLIV

Men and women carouse: down the throat of one
bloated fellow Death pours the wine.

THE FOOL XLV

The Fool dances along the highway with Death,
who plays the bagpipes.

THE ROBBER XLVI

Death seizes the Robber in the act of pillage.

THE BLIND MAN XLVII

Death leads the Blind Man by his staff.

THE WAGGONER XLVIII

The waggon is overturned; one Death carries off
a wheel, the other loosens the fastening of a cask.

THE BEGGAR XLIX

The Beggar, lying on straw outside the city,
cries in vain for Death.

[Two others, not found in the earlier editions, "The Young
Wife," and "The Young Husband," are not included in the
Douce reprint for which the foregoing blocks were engraved.]

Les simulachres &

HISTORIEES FACES

DE LA MORT, AVTANT ELE

gammêt pourtraictes, que artificiellement
imaginées.

A LYON,

Soubz l'escu de COLOIGNE,