The Dance of Death.

207

Mr. Wood, in his " View of the History of Switzerland."as quoted in the Monthly Review, Nov. 1799, p. 290, states,that " the Dance of Death in the churchyard of the Predi-cants has been falsely ascribed to Holbein, as it is provedthat it was painted long after the death of that artist, and notbefore he was born, as the honourable Horace Walpolesupposes/' Here the corrector stands in need himself ofcorrection, unless it be possible that he is not fairly quotedby the reviewer.

Miss Williams, in her Swiss Tour, 1798, when speaking ofthe Basle Dance of Death, says it was painted by Kleber, apupil of Holbein.

Those intelligent and amusing travellers, Breval, Keysler,and Blainville, have carefully avoided the above strangemistakes.

Writers on Painting and Engraving. —Meyssens, inhis article for Holbein in "the effigies of the Painters,"mentions his " Death's Dance, in the town-hall of Basle,the design whereof he first neatly cut in wood and afterwardspainted, which appeared so fine to the learned Erasmus,"&c. English edition, 1694, p. 15.

Felibien, in his " Entretiens sur les Vies des Peintres,"follows Meyssens as to the painting in the town-hall.

Le Comte places the supposed painting by Holbein inthe fish-market, and in other respects copies Meyssens."Cabinet des Singularites," &c. torn. iii. p. 323, edit. 1702,i2mo.

Bullart not only places the painting in the town-hall ofBasle, but adds, that he afterwards engraved it in wood."Acad, des Sciences et des Arts," torn. ii. p. 412.

Mr. Evelyn, in his " Sculptura," the only one of his worksthat does him no credit, and which is a meagre and extremelyinaccurate compilation, when speaking of Holbein, actuallyruns riot in error and misconception. He calls him a Dane.He makes what he terms " the licentiousness of the friarsand nuns," meaning probably Hollar's sixteen etchings afterHolbein's satire on monks and friars and other members ofthe Romish Church as the persecutors of Christ, and alsothe " Dance Machabre and Mortis imago," to have beencut in wood, and one or both of the latter to have beenpainted in the church at Basle. Mr. Evelyn's own copy of