Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 | Page 8

the oldest
example being that at Little Bâle, which was painted in 1312. This, like
that in Great Bâle, and most of the others, has been destroyed by time
or violence. The Dance was made the ornament of books of devotion,
and the subject of ornamental initial-letters; groups from it were
engraved repeatedly by those fantastic designers and exquisite
workmen known as the Little Masters of Germany; a single group was
assumed as a device, or trademark, by more than one printer; and it was
sung in popular ballads. There is now at Aix-la-Chapelle a huge
state-bed-stead, on the posts, sides, and footboards of which it is
elaborately carved, in the manner of the sixteenth century; and it was
even made the ornament of ladies' fans.
The reasons for this popularity were a certain strange fascination in the
subject,--yet not so strange at a time when women would crowd to see
men burned or hanged and quartered;--but chiefly, the grand
democratic significance of the dance. Death has ever been, and ever
will be, the greatest leveller; and at a time when rank had an
importance and bestowed advantages of which we can form little idea,
while at the same time men had begun to ask why this should be, such a
satire as this Dance of Death, sanctioned by the Church, that great
protector of established rights and dignities, and yet sparing neither
noble nor hierarch, not even the Pope himself, satisfied an eager
craving in the breast of poor, envious, self-asserting human nature. In
one of those ornamental initial-letters above mentioned, the date of
which was some years prior to the execution of Holbein's Dance, Death
appears as a grave-digger, and lifts on his spade, out of the grave which
he is making, two skulls, one crowned, the other covered with a
peasant's hat. He grins with savage glee at seeing these remnants of the
two extremes of society side by side; and underneath them, on the
shovel, is written _Idem_,--"The Same." In this word is the key to the
popularity of the Dance.
The most important and interesting of these pictured Dances of Death
were those at Bâle, at Strasbourg, and at Rouen. That at Bâle consisted
of thirty-nine groups, in the first three of which appear a Pope, an
Emperor, and a King. These were portraits of Pope Felix V., the

Emperor Sigismund, and King Albert II., of Rome, all of whom were
present at the Council, by whose order, as we have seen, the Dance was
painted. The last group of this Dance shows the seizure of the painter's
child by Death. It having been almost destroyed by time, the wall on
which it was painted was torn down about a hundred years ago; but
engravings had been made of it in the latter part of the seventeenth
century. The Dance at Strasbourg, like that at Bâle, and many others,
was on the wall of a Dominican convent. It was painted in arched
compartments, and is peculiar in that its groups consist of many figures,
among whom Death intrudes, and carries off one, generally the
principal personage of the company. It was painted about 1450, and
probably by the eminent German painter, Martin Schongauer; but
having been utterly neglected and forgotten, it was finally plastered
over, no one knows when. In repairing the church in 1824, it was
accidentally discovered, and carefully exposed; but it was so much
injured that it fell into decay soon after drawings had been made from
it.
The Dance at Rouen was in the still existing Cemetery of St. Maclou,
and was not a painting, but a sculpture. It was not entirely completed
until 1526. The cemetery is surrounded by a covered gallery open on
the inside, where it was supported by thirty-nine columns, distant about
eleven feet from each other. Thirty-one of these still exist; and upon the
shaft of all but four of them, on the side facing the court of the
cemetery, is sculptured, in high relief, a group of two figures,--one a
living personage, and the other the cadaverous body by which Death
was represented. On the remainder were sculptured the Christian
Virtues and the Fates,--two on each column. The capitals of these
columns are decorated with figures quite in another manner. Cupids,
naked female figures, grotesque masks, and shapes--human and
bestial--are ingeniously substituted for the foliage usually found on that
part of a column. The execution of these figures is of quite a high order.
They have all been sadly mutilated; but, fortunately, that which has
suffered least is a beautiful figure of Eve. Her head is gone; but the
flowing lines of the lovely torso are unbroken, and the round and
graceful limbs are almost as perfect as when they came from the
sculptor's chisel. This