The Dance of Death

FULLY ILLUSTRATED The Dance of Death The Images and Storied Aspects of Death Hans Holbein Translated by George Oemmel or Aemilius With an introductory note by Austin Dobson 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. 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.