CHAPTER XVI

Painti?igs. — Drawings. — Miscella?ieous.

||ENE of Anjou is said to have painteda sort of Death's Dance at Avignon,which was destroyed in the FrenchRevolution.

In one of the wardrobe accounts ofHenry VIII. a picture at Westminster is

________ thus described :—■" Item, a table with the

picture of a woman playing upon a lute,and an old manne holding a glasse in th' one hande and adeadde mannes headde in th' other hande." (MS. Harl.

No. 1419.)

A round painting in oil, by or from Hans Holbein.The subject, an old man making love to a young girl.Death pulling him back, hints at the consequences, whilstthe absurdity is manifested by the presence of a fool, withcockscomb and bauble, on the other side. Diameter, 15inches. From the striking resemblance in the features ofthe old lover to those of Erasmus, there is no doubt thatHolbein intended by this group to retort upon his friend,who, on one of the drawings which Holbein had insertedin a copy of Erasmus's " Praise of Folly,"' now in the publiclibrary at Basle, and which represented a fat epicure attable embracing a wench, had written the name of Holbein,in allusion to his well-known intemperance. In the present

writer's possession.

The small painting by Isaac Oliver, from Holbein, for-merly at vWhitehall, of Death with a green garland, &c.already more particularly.described at p. 128,