208

The Dance of Death.

this work, with several additions in manuscript, is in thepossession of Mr. Taylor, a retired and ingenious artist, ofCirencester-place. He probably intended to reprint it, andopposite the above-mentioned word " Dane " has inserted aquery.

Sandrart places the Dance of Death in the fish-market atBasle, and makes Holbein the painter as well as the en-graver. "Acad, artis pictoriae," p. 238, edit. 1683, folio.

Baldinucci speaks of twenty prints of the Dance ofDeath painted by Holbein in the Senate-house of Basle." Notizie de professori del disegno," &c. torn. iii. pp. 313 and

3i9-

M. Descamps inadvertently ascribes the old Dance OiDeath on the walls of the churchyard of Saint Peter to thepencil of Holbein. "Vie des Peintres Flamands," &c1753. 8vo. Tom. i. p. 75.

Papillon, in his account of the Dance of Death, aboundswith inaccuracies. He says, that a magistrate of Basleemployed him to paint a Dance of Death in the fish-market,near a churchyard : that the work greatly increased hisreputation, and made much noise in the world, although ithas many anatomical defects; that he engraved this paintingon small blocks of wood with unparalleled beauty anddelicacy. He supposes that they first appeared in 1530 atBasle or Zurich, and, as he thinks, with a title and Germanverses on each print. Now he had never seen any editionso early as 1530, nor any of the cuts with German verses,and having probably been misled on this occasion, he hasbeen the cause of misleading many subsequent writers, asFournier, Huber, Strutt, &c. He adopts the error as to

the mark JJj on the thirty-sixth subject belonging to

Holbein. He is entirely ignorant of the nature andcharacter of the fool or idiot in No. xliii. whom he terms" un homme lascif qui a leve le devant de sa robbe :" and ;to crown the whole, he makes the old Macaber Dance animitation of that ascribed to Holbein.

De Murr, in torn. ii. p. 535 of his " Bibliotheque dePeinture," &c. servilely copies Papillon in all that he hassaid on the subject, with some additional errors of his own.

The Abbe Fontenai, in the article for Holbein in his