The Dance of Death
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Other Media
The Dance of Death Details
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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Reviews
The Dance of Death ("dance macabre" in French, "Totentanz" in German) is one of the most enduring art forms of 15th-16th Century Europe. And the most popular and famous Dance of Death series is that of Hans Holbein the Younger - a set of 41 woodcuts depicting death interrupting the lives of men, women, and children from all walks and stations of life in order to make its unwelcome and ineluctable claim. Holbein's series also draws from and incorporates a related pictorial tradition of human mortality - the "Memento mori" ("remember that you will die"), which emphasizes the need for the devout to always be prepared for death. What makes Holbein's series so striking is his depiction of death in the form of mocking, leering, gleeful skeletal figures.Holbein's Dance of Death was first published in collected book form in 1538 in Lyons, France. The greater part of this Dover edition (the first 104 pages) consists of a facsimile of that 1538 book. Inasmuch as it was written and published in 16th-Century French, few modern native-English-speaking readers are likely to be drawn to it. The attraction of the Dover edition is the last 41 pages, in which Holbein's 41 woodcuts are repeated in order, with English translations of the original Latin Biblical verses and French quatrains that appeared with each print in the 1538 edition.As set forth in this Dover edition, Holbein's prints are small - 2½ inches by 1¾ inches (the same size as in the original) - and not as sharp or crisp as one would like (probably the result of deterioration of the original wood blocks used in 1538 to print the particular copy from which this facsimile was made). Still, this Dover edition is the only relatively affordable edition currently available that I know of, and the prints are of sufficient quality to make Holbein's genius and the underlying 16th-Century milieu readily accessible.Enhancing each print is the English translation of the lively and sometimes caustic quatrains from the original 1538 volume. For example, here is the quatrain for Print XVIII, "The Judge", which portrays skeletal death prying away the staff of office from a seated judge who is deciding a case between a poor man and a rich man, the latter reaching into his purse for some coins to give to the judge:"From out thy seat thou shalt be taken,So oft bribed to iniquity--Thy ill-got gains must be forsaken'No bribe can buy thy life from me."
