In this great work “in little” Holbein’s imagination found its fullest and most expressive play, and it is small wonder, therefore, that the Dance soon gained a wide popularity. Almost from the beginning it appears to have been well known as Holbein’s work, and numerous references to it occur in contemporary literature. The learned Conrad Gesner, of Zürich, a younger contemporary of the artist, expressly ascribes it to him in his _Partitiones Theologicæ_, &c., published in 1549. The passage runs: “Imagines Mortis expressæ ab optimo pictore Johanne Holbein cum epigrammatibus Georgii Æmylii, excusæ Francofurti et Lugduni apud Frellonios, quorum editio plures habet picturas. Vidi etiam cum metris Gallicis et Germanicis, si bene memini.” Van Mander, whose _Het Schilder Boek_ was first published in 1604, includes the Dance among Holbein’s works; and Joachim von Sandrart, in his Life of the artist, tells a charming story which indicates in how high an estimation Holbein’s designs were held just one hundred years after he drew them on the wood. Sandrart, who was a pupil of Gerard Honthorst at Utrecht, says: “I remember that in the year 1627, when the celebrated Rubens was proceeding to Utrecht to visit Honthorst, I accompanied him as far as Amsterdam; and during our passage in the boat I looked into Holbein’s little book of the _Dance of Death_, the cuts of which Rubens highly praised, recommending me, as I was a young man, to copy them, observing that he had copied them himself in his youth.” Sandrart was then a young man of twenty, and was on his way to England with his master. “And after this,” he adds, “Rubens held a beautiful and laudatory discourse almost the whole way upon Holbein, Dürer, and other old German painters.”[483] VOL. I., PLATE 68. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration: THE DANCE OF DEATH ALPHABET _From proof in the Royal Print Cabinet, Dresden_ ] [Sidenote: THE “DANCE OF DEATH” ALPHABET]