The legend that Holbein also painted a “Dance of Death,” composed of life-size figures, upon the walls of one of the rooms in Whitehall, is probably pure fiction, or, at least, there is much less to be said in its favour than for Pepys’ attribution of the ceiling in the Matted Gallery to the painter. The writer who first gave currency to the story was Francis Douce, in his “Dance of Death,” published in 1833. According to his statement, “very soon after the calamitous fire at Whitehall in 1697,[399] which consumed nearly the whole of that palace, a person, calling himself T. Nieuhoff Piccard, probably belonging to the household of William III, and a man who appears to have been an amateur artist,”[400] made etchings after nineteen of the cuts in the Lyon “Dance of Death.” Impressions of these etchings, accompanied with manuscript dedications, are said to have been presented by this Piccard to his friends and patrons, and among others to a Mynheer Heymans, and to the “high, noble, and well-born Lord William Denting, Lord of Rhoon, Pendreght,” &c. In these addresses Piccard speaks of a “wall-painting” of the “Dance” by Holbein which he himself had seen in Whitehall. In the dedication to Heymans he says: Footnote 399: Should be 1698. Footnote 400: _Holbein’s Dance of Death_, ed. 1858, p. 124. “Sir,—The costly palace of Whitehall, erected by Cardinal Wolsey, and the residence of King Henry VIII, contains, among other performances of art, a _Dance of Death_, painted by Holbein in its galleries, which, through an unfortunate conflagration, has been reduced to ashes.” In the dedication to “Lord William Benting” Piccard is more precise: “Sir,—In the course of my constant love and pursuit of works of art, it has been my good fortune to meet with that scarce little work of Hans Holbein neatly engraved on wood, and which he himself had painted as large as life in fresco on the walls of Whitehall.” * * * * *