The Dance of Death: Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of that Subject but More Particularly on Those Ascribed to Macaber and Hans HolbeinDouce, Francis
History
The Dance of Death: Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of that Subject but More Particularly on Those Ascribed to Macaber and Hans Holbein
Douce, Francis
Bible. Old Testament -- Illustrations; Dance of death
V. "Imagines Mortis, his accesserunt epigrammata è Gallico idiomate à
Georgio Æmylio in Latinum translata, &c. Coloniæ apud hæredes Arnoldi
Birckmanni, anno 1555. 12mo." With fifty-three cuts. This may be regarded
as a surreptitious edition of No. IV. of the originals by [monogram: HL]
p. 106. The cuts are by the artist mentioned in No. IX. of those
originals, whose mark is [monogram: SA] which is here found on five of
them. They are all reversed, except the nobleman; and although not devoid
of merit, they are not only very inferior to the fine originals, but also
to the Italian copies in No. I. The first two subjects are newly designed;
the two Devils in that of the Pope are omitted, and there are several
variations, always for the worse, in many of the others, of which a
tasteless example is found in that of Death and the soldier, where the
thigh bone, as the very appropriate weapon of Death, is here converted
into the common-place dart. The mark [monogram: HL] in the original cut of
the Duchess in bed, is here omitted, without the substitution of any
other. This edition was republished by the same persons, without any
variation, successively in 1557, 1566, 1567, and 1573.[116]
Papillon, in his "Traité sur la gravure en bois,"[117] when noticing the
above-mentioned mark, has, amidst the innumerable errors that abound in
his otherwise curious work, been led into a mistake of an exceedingly
ludicrous nature, by converting the owner of the mark into a cardinal. He
had found it on the cuts to an edition of Faerno's fables, printed at
Antwerp, 1567, which is dedicated to Cardinal Borromeo by Silvio
Antoniano, professor of Belles Lettres at Rome, afterwards secretary to
Pope Pius IV. and at length himself a Cardinal. He was the editor of
Faerno's work. Another of Papillon's blunders is equally curious and
absurd. He had seen an edition of the Emblems of Sambucus, with cuts,
bearing the mark [monogram: SA] in which there is a fine portrait of the
author with his favourite dog, and under the latter the word BOMBO, which
Papillon gravely states to be the name of the engraver; and finding the
same word on another of the emblems which has also the dog, he concludes
that all the cuts which have not the [monogram: SA] were engraved by the
same BOMBO. Had Papillon, a good artist in his time, but an ignorant man,
been able to comprehend the verses belonging to that particular emblem, he
would have seen that the above word was merely the name of the dog, as
Sambucus himself has declared, whilst paying a laudable tribute to the
attachment of the faithful companion of his travels. Brulliot, in his
article on the mark [monogram: SA][118] has mentioned Papillon's ascription
of it to Silvio Antoniano, but without correcting the blunder, as he ought
to have done. This monogram appears on five of the cuts to the present
edition of the "Imagines Mortis;" but M. De Murr and his follower Janssen,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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