A round painting in oil, by or from Hans Holbein. The subject, an old man making love to a young girl. Death pulling him back, hints at the consequences, whilst the absurdity is manifested by the presence of a fool, with cockscomb and bauble, on the other side. Diameter, 15 inches. From the striking resemblance in the features of the old lover to those of Erasmus, there is no doubt that Holbein intended by this group to retort upon his friend, who, on one of the drawings which Holbein had inserted in a copy of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, now in the public library at Basle, and which represented a fat epicure at table embracing a wench, had written the name of Holbein, in allusion to his well-known intemperance. In the present writer’s possession.
The small painting by Isaac Oliver, from Holbein, formerly at Whitehall, of Death with a green garland, &c. already more particularly described at p. [145].
A small painting in oil, by Old Franks, of a gouty old miser startled at the unexpected appearance of Death, who approaches him playing on a violin, one of his feet resting on an hour-glass. In the distance, and in another room, Death is seen in conversation with a sitting gentleman. Upright, 7½ by 5½.
The same subject, painted in oil by Otho Vænius, in which a guitar is substituted for the violin. This picture was in the collection of Richard Cosway, Esquire. Upright, 12 by 6, and is now belonging to the present writer.
A Mr. Knowles, a modern artist, is said to have painted a miser counting his hoard, and Death putting an extinguisher over him.
At p. 460 of the memoirs of that most ingenious artist, Charles Alfred Stothard, by his widow, mention is made of an old picture, at Nettlecombe Hall, Somersetshire, belonging to its owner, a clergyman, of a Dance of Death.
Mr. Tyssen, a bookseller at Bristol, is said to possess a will of the 15th century, in which the testator bequeaths a painting of the Dance of Death.
DRAWINGS.
In a beautifully illuminated Psalter, supposed to have been made for Richard II. and preserved among the Cotton MSS. Domit. xvii. is a very singular painting, representing part of the choir of a cathedral, with ten monks sitting in their stalls, and chaunting the service. At the top of these stalls, and behind it, are five grotesque Deaths looking down on the monks. One of the Deaths has a cardinal’s hat, two have baronial crowns on their heads, and those of the remaining two are decorated with a sort of imperial crowns, shaped like the papal tiara. A priest celebrates mass at the altar, before which another priest or monk prostrates himself. What the object of the painter was in the introduction of these singular figures of Death is difficult to comprehend.
