Editing Danse Macabre (section)

==Hans Holbein's woodcuts==
{{Infobox book
| name              = The Dance of Death
| image             = 3. Holbein death Abbot.300dpi.jpg
| author            = [[Hans Holbein the Younger]]
| country           = England
| genre             = [[Allegory]], satire, [[woodcuts]] and death
| translator        = 
| caption           = Example of a woodcut from the book [The Abbott]
| cover_artist      = 
| series            = 
| release_date      = 1538
| title_orig        = Danse Macabre
}}
{{anchor|Holbein}}

Renowned for his ''Dance of Death'' series, the famous designs by [[Hans Holbein the Younger]] (1497–1543) were drawn in 1526 while he was in [[Basel]]. They were cut in wood by the accomplished [[Formschneider]] (block cutter) [[Hans Lützelburger]].

William Ivins (quoting W. J. Linton) writes of Lützelburger's work wrote:

"''{{`}}Nothing indeed, by knife or by graver, is of higher quality than this man's doing.' For by common acclaim the originals are technically the most marvelous woodcuts ever made''."<ref>Ivins, p. 234.</ref> 

These woodcuts soon appeared in proofs with titles in German. The first book edition, titled ''Les Simulachres et Historiées Faces de la Mort'' and containing forty-one woodcuts, was published at Lyons by the Treschsel brothers in 1538. The popularity of the work, and the currency of its message, are underscored by the fact that there were eleven editions before 1562, and over the sixteenth century perhaps as many as a hundred unauthorized editions and imitations.<ref>Clark (1947), p. 32.</ref> Ten further designs were added in later editions.

The ''Dance of Death'' (1523–26) refashions the late-medieval [[allegory]] of the ''Danse Macabre'' as a reformist satire, and one can see the beginnings of a gradual shift from traditional to reformed Christianity.<ref>Wilson, 96–103.</ref> That shift had many permutations however, and in a study Natalie Zemon Davis has shown that the contemporary reception and afterlife of Holbein's designs lent themselves to neither purely Catholic or Protestant doctrine, but could be outfitted with different surrounding prefaces and sermons as printers and writers of different political and religious leanings took them up. Most importantly, "''The pictures and the Bible quotations above them were the main attractions […] Both Catholics and Protestants wished, through the pictures, to turn men's thoughts to a Christian preparation for death.''".<ref>Davis, p. 126.</ref>

The 1538 edition which contained Latin quotations from the Bible above Holbein's designs, and a French quatrain below composed by [[Gilles Corrozet]] (1510–1568) actually did not credit Holbein as the artist. It bore the title: Les simulachres & / HISTORIEES FACES / DE LA MORT, AUTANT ELE/gammēt pourtraictes, que artifi/ciellement imaginées. / A Lyon. / Soubz l'escu de COLOIGNE. / M.D. XXXVIII. ("Images and Illustrated facets of Death, as elegantly depicted as they are artfully conceived.")<ref>See External links to access to this work, including English translation, online.</ref> These images and workings of death as captured in the phrase "histories faces" of the title "are the particular exemplification of the way death works, the individual scenes in which the lessons of mortality are brought home to people of every station."<ref>Gundersheimer, introduction, p.xi.</ref>
[[File:Holbein Danse Macabre 5.jpg|left|thumb|From Holbein's ''Simolachri, Historie, e Figure de la Morte'' (in Lyone Appresso Giovan Frellone, 1549)]]
[[File:Holbein Danse Macabre 15.jpg|thumb|The Abbess from Holbein's ''Simolachri, Historie, e Figure de la Morte'', 1549]]

In his preface to the work Jean de Vauzèle, the Prior of Montrosier, addresses Jehanne de Tourzelle, the Abbess of the Convent at St. Peter at Lyons, and names Holbein's attempts to capture the ever-present, but never directly seen, abstract images of death "simulachres." He writes: "''[…] simulachres les dis ie vrayement, pour ce que simulachre vient de simuler, & faindre ce que n'est point.''" ("Simulachres they are most correctly called, for simulachre derives from the verb to simulate and to feign that which is not really there.") He next employs a trope from the [[memento mori]] (remember we all must die) tradition and a metaphor from printing which well captures the undertakings of Death, the artist, and the printed book before us in which these simulachres of death barge in on the living: ''"Et pourtant qu'on n'a peu trouver chose plus approchante a la similitude de Mort, que la personne morte, on d'icelle effigie simulachres, & faces de Mort, pour en nos pensees imprimer la memoire de Mort plus au vis, que ne pourroient toutes les rhetoriques descriptiones de orateurs."''<ref>As reproduced in Gundersheimer, 1971. p. 5. Register Aiii of original.</ref> ("And yet we cannot discover any one thing more near the likeness of Death than the dead themselves, whence come these simulated effigies and images of Death's affairs, which imprint the memory of Death with more force than all the rhetorical descriptions of the orators ever could.").
[[File:Holbein Danse Macabre 38.jpg|thumb|The Plowman from Holbein's ''Simolachri, Historie, e Figure de la Morte'', 1549]]
[[File:Holbein Danse Macabre 37.jpg|right|thumb|The Pedlar from Holbein's ''Simolachri, Historie, e Figure de la Morte'' (in Lyone Appresso Giovan Frellone, 1549)]]

Holbein's series shows the figure of "Death" in many disguises, confronting individuals from all walks of life. None escape Death's skeletal clutches, not even the pious.<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 56–58, and Landau & Parshall, 216.</ref> As Davis writes, "Holbein's pictures are independent dramas in which Death comes upon his victim in the midst of the latter's own surroundings and activities.<ref>Davis, p.101</ref> This is perhaps nowhere more strikingly captured than in the wonderful blocks showing the plowman earning his bread by the sweat of his brow only to have his horses speed him to his end by Death. The Latin from the 1549 Italian edition pictured here reads: "In sudore vultus tui, vesceris pane tuo." ("Through the sweat of thy brow you shall eat your bread"), quoting Genesis 3.19. The Italian verses below translate: ("Miserable in the sweat of your brow,/ It is necessary that you acquire the bread you need eat,/ But, may it not displease you to come with me,/ If you are desirous of rest."). Or there is the nice balance in composition Holbein achieves between the heavy-laden traveling salesman insisting that he must still go to market while Death tugs at his sleeve to put down his wares once and for all: "Venite ad me, qui onerati estis." ("Come to me, all ye who [labour and] are heavy laden"), quoting Matthew 11.28. The Italian here translates: "Come with me, wretch, who are weighed down / Since I am the dame who rules the whole world:/ Come and hear my advice / Because I wish to lighten you of this load."<ref>Simolachri, Historie, e Figure de la Morte. In Lyone Appresso. Giovan Frellone, M.D. XLIX.</ref>

[[File:Vilnius - St. Peter and St. Paul's Church 10.jpg|thumb|Danse Macabre, a reminder of the universality of death in the [[Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Vilnius|St. Peter and St. Paul church]], Vilnius]]