For centuries before the birth of Holbein the subject of Death in both pictorial and literary art was a favourite one throughout Europe, and more particularly among the German-speaking peoples, to whose imagination it made a strong appeal. Its representation both in painting and in literature was of common occurrence long before he made use of it, and by his genius rendered it immortal. The whole history of the subject is of great interest, and a voluminous literature has gathered round it, upon which it is not possible to touch in these pages. From the Middle Ages onwards these representations of the Dance of the Dead became common, and were painted on the walls of churches, the cloisters of convents, and castle halls. Well-known examples of such wall-paintings at one time existed in Paris, Blois, Berlin, Dresden, Lubeck, Strasburg, Basel, Berne, and other places, while in England a famous one was painted on the north side of St. Paul’s Cathedral during the reign of Henry VI. With the invention of printing, small versions of the pictures were issued in book form, and beneath them the old verses which accompanied the earlier wall-paintings, pointing out the terrors of death, and exhorting the wicked to repentance ere it was too late. In course of time the illustrations assumed greater importance, the number of the figures was increased, and the verses played only a secondary part. [Sidenote: WALL-PAINTINGS OF “DANCE OF DEATH”] More than one early wall-painting of the Dance existed in Basel in Holbein’s day, and there can be little doubt that the constant sight of them stirred his imagination, and influenced his conception of the subject when he in his turn made use of it. The earliest in point of date was the one in the Klingenthal nunnery in Little Basel, which is said to have been dated 1312; but it is doubtful whether much of this wall-painting remained by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Only a few badly-damaged portions were in existence in 1773, when it was rediscovered by Emanuel Büchel, a baker, who made coloured copies of what was left, which are now in the Basel Gallery. No traces of the original painting are now to be seen. The better-known Dance of the Dominican monastery in Great Basel in the suburb of St. John was of later date, executed probably towards the end of the fourteenth or early in the fifteenth century. According to tradition, for which there is no absolute proof, it was painted after the deliverance of Basel from the horrors of the terrible plague which raged there in 1439. It was copied or adapted from the older Klingenthal painting, closely following its arrangement of the various couples, but showing a great advance in artistic treatment, and in the variety and movements of the dancers. It consisted of about forty life-sized groups. In course of time it became so faded that in 1568 it was restored by Hans Hug Kluber, who made several additions to it; and it was again repaired in 1616, and in 1703.