5. THE PLOUGHMAN
6. THE YOUNG CHILD
7. THE LAST JUDGMENT
8. THE ARMS OF DEATH
From proofs in the British Museum
THE DUCHESS, AND OTHERS
Some of the finest designs are to be found among the remaining woodcuts. Death, clad in chain mail, runs a lance through the body of the Knight, a man in full armour, with huge plumes in his helmet, who gives a last despairing cry and attempts to strike down his enemy with his sword. A low-lying landscape stretches out in the distance, lit up by the rays of the fast-sinking sun. The Count has little of the Knight’s bravery. He clasps his hands in terror as Death, disguised as a peasant, with his flail flung on the ground, prepares to strike him down with his own heraldic escutcheon. On the other hand, the Old Man (Pl. [67] (1)), bent with the weight of years, tottering down his garden with the help of a thick stick, finds in Death nothing but a kindly companion, who leads him gently by the hand to the edge of a deep grave dug in the turf, while with the other hand he plays a dulcimer. The Countess (Pl. [67] (2)) in her chamber, to whom her maid is handing a sumptuous dress, is helped in her toilet by Death, who fixes round her shoulders a necklace of dead men’s bones. The Nobleman’s Wife (Pl. [67] (3)) walks along hand in hand with her husband, who gazes on her with affection, oblivious to all else, while a grinning skeleton precedes them, beating vigorously on his drum. The woodcut of the Duchess (Pl. [67] (4)) is the one which Lützelburger has signed with his initials in an escutcheon on the foot of the bedpost. The lady, fully dressed, springs up from her sleep in fright, as Death at the end of the bed tears the coverlet from her. A second skeleton plays the fiddle, while her greyhound crouches terrified on the floor. Death is also accompanied by a music-making comrade when he encounters the Pedlar with his heavily-laden pack on his back, and clutches him by the sleeve.
Once again he comes in the guise of a friend to the old and weary Ploughman (Pl. [67] (5)), in rags and barefooted, his hair straggling through his broken hat. Death helps him in ploughing the last furrow, and flogs forward the worn-out team of thin and miserable horses. At the end of the field with its long ploughed lines a delightful landscape lies stretched, with the houses of a village nestling among the trees, the church tower rising from the hillside on one of the lower spurs of the Swiss mountains, the whole peaceful scene flooded with the light of the setting sun. This background is, perhaps, the most beautiful of all, and yet its lovely effect is produced with the simplest means. The long list of Death’s victims concludes with the Young Child (Pl. [67] (6)), whom he leads by the hand through the doorway of a miserable, half-ruined cottage, with broken roof open to all weathers. The child turns back in terror, its free hand stretched towards its mother, who kneels stirring the pot on the scanty fire, the smoke of which half fills the room. Both she and an older child gaze after the little one with mouth wide open in astonishment and fear, and hands uplifted to head. The original series concludes with two cuts, one representing the Last Judgment (Pl. [67] (7)), with Christ enthroned on the rainbow over the celestial globe, with the saints around him, and down below a crowd of men and women newly risen from the grave; and the other showing the Arms of Death (Pl. [67] (8)), which recalls, in its arrangement, more than one of Holbein’s designs for painted glass. The shield, on which is placed a skull, with a worm hanging from its jaws, is shattered and torn in places, as though fashioned from a great bone which has mouldered in the grave. A tattered winding-sheet is draped round it, and it is surmounted by a helmet with an hour-glass for a crest, from the base of which two skeleton arms grasping a large stone are raised aloft. The supporters are a man and woman in the rich costume of Holbein’s day, each of whom rests a hand on the escutcheon, the latter gazing down at it, while the former points to the skeleton arms and looks towards the spectator as though to urge him to remember that death is the end of all things. In the background rise the peaks of the Alps beneath a cloudy sky. Dr. Woltmann saw in these two figures likenesses of Holbein and his wife, but they evidently represent personages in a higher sphere of life.
THE WAGGONER AND OTHERS
The eight additional subjects which were included in the edition of 1545 were, with possibly one exception, designed by Holbein, and it seems almost certain that the cutting of most, if not all, of the blocks had been begun by Lützelburger, and that they were sent to Lyon after his death in 1526, as part of the commission he had received from the Trechsels. The first of them represents the Soldier, who is attacking Death with his two-handed sword. The latter is armed with a great bone and a circular shield. The ground beneath them is strewn with the dead and dying, and over the hills in the background comes rushing a body of soldiers, with a second skeleton beating a drum as he leads the charge. Next we have the Gamester, seated at table with two comrades. Death clutches him by the throat, and a devil seizes him by the hair. One of the party is counting his gains, and cards are strewn over the floor. This is followed by the Drunkard, a scene with men and women in the middle of a disorderly carouse, among whom Death stalks, and, pulling back the head of one of them, a gross and bloated old man, pours wine down his throat from a tankard. The Fool dances over the rough ground, one finger in his mouth, and a long bladder grasped in the other hand, as though about to strike at Death, who, falling into his humour, dances by his side to the music of the bagpipes he is playing. The Robber, hidden in the recesses of a wood, is springing from behind the trees in order to snatch the market-basket from the head of a barefooted woman who passes by as night is falling, but Death has him by the neck before he can accomplish his purpose. In the next scene he is leading the Blind Man by his stick towards the water into which the next step or two will plunge him; and then comes the Waggoner, the woodcut which in the preface is mentioned by name as the one which the engraver left unfinished. Vauzelles’ description of it is not in complete accord with the finished block. The driver is not crushed beneath his waggon, but stands with hands clasped over his head, and a look of mingled fear and consternation on his face. The horse within the shafts has fallen on the side of a steep hill, and the cart with its great barrels is overturned. Death springs up behind, and untwists the stick by which the cord which fastens the barrel is kept taut. A second skeleton carries away one of the waggon wheels, which has been broken off. The concluding design shows the Beggar, lame and blind, and almost nude, seated among the straw and rubbish in front of some rich man’s house, his hands raised as though imploring Death to come for him; but he is the only one from whom Death keeps aloof. This block, as already noted, is so badly cut that it is not easy to say with certainty whether Holbein was the designer of it. In the “Young Wife” of the 1562 edition, Death is dancing as he leads her away in tears, while they are preceded by a gaily dressed gallant who plays a guitar. In the companion cut, Death also dances, and blows a trumpet, as he drags off the “Young Husband” by the corner of his cloak. In the background is a ruined building.
It would be difficult to find a happier partnership than that which existed between the designer and the engraver of this great Dance. Lützelburger has reproduced Holbein’s dramatic story with the utmost sympathy and understanding, and from a technical point of view the cutting comes as near perfection as possible. Holbein’s delicate and expressive line is retained almost unimpaired, and there is no pretentious elaboration of detail merely to show the skill of the woodcutter. With the simplest methods—with sparing use of cross-hatching for the indication of light and shade—methods best suited to the material used, the most beautiful results have been obtained, for which designer and engraver must share the praise. So admirably are these cuts executed, says Chatto, “with so much feeling and with so much knowledge of the capabilities of the art, that I do not think any wood-engraver of the present time is capable of surpassing them. The manner in which they are engraved is comparatively simple: there is no laboured and unnecessary cross-hatching where the same effect might be obtained by simpler means; no display of fine work merely to show the artist’s talent in cutting delicate lines. Every line is expressive; and the end is always obtained by the simplest means. In this the talent and feeling of the engraver are chiefly displayed. He wastes not his time in mere mechanical execution—which in the present day is often mistaken for excellence;—he endeavours to give to each character its appropriate expression; and in this he appears to have succeeded better, considering the small size of the cuts, than any other wood-engraver, either of times past or present.”[[482]]
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.