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U was in the year 1611 that the counsil ofI Lucerne resolved to adorn with paintingsthe «Muhlenbrucke» (built 1408) in the sameway as the Cathedral- and Chapelbridges.

At first it was concluded to choose scenesof a merry meaning, but as the country was vi-sited soon afterwards by heavy calamities, as warand pestilence, it was found more convenient toput in the mind of people serious thoughts andan exhortation for a more virtuos course of life.For that reason the talented painter CasparMeglinger (1595—1667) was ordered 1652 by thecounsil of Lucerne to paint a danse of death.

Meglinger, inspired by a similar work, dueto a painter Rodolph Meyer from Zurich, re-presented in 67 paintings the instability of hu-man life.

The bridge on which these paintings wereplaced, beeing only partly covered, they wantedto be restored from time to time. On these oc-casions it was not always acted very scrupulouslyand the verses underneath were often changed,

and the persons, on whose costs the restorationwas made, added their arms to those of thefounders. The painter Emil Wegmann (1682)added occasionally the painting of the watch-maker and Hans-Jorg Hunkeler (1727) his ownlikeness in the person of the physician on thepainting «the dying cardinal*.

In the year 1781 a part of the bridge waspulled down and 22 of the paintings taken away.Happily they were nearly all well preserved andcould be reproduced in this work with thoseactually on the bridge.

From the original cycle there aie wantingonly the hermite, the physician, the maid-servantand the beggar.

The reproduction of the paintings was madeat the hand of copies from the originals, drawnby the well kwown painter X. Schwegler in Lucerne.

*A number of the drawings of my edition

have been unlawfully copied and reproduced in

Phototypie.