[97] Manuel de l’Amateur d’estampes, ii. 131.
[98] Manuel des curieux, &c. i. 156.
[99] Some give it to the Abbé Baverel.
[100] Lib. ult. p. 86.
[101] The dedicator has apparently in this place been guilty of a strange misconception. The Death is not sucking the wine from the cask, but in the act of untwisting the fastening to one of the hoops. Nor is the carman crushed beneath the wheels: on the contrary, he is represented as standing upright and wringing his hands in despair at what he beholds. It is true that this cut was not then completed, and might have undergone some subsequent alteration. He likewise speaks of the rainbow in the cut of the Last Judgment, as being at that time unfinished, which, however, is introduced in this first edition.
[102] It would be of some importance if the date of Lutzenberger’s death could be ascertained.
[103] “An enquiry into the origin and early history of Engraving,” 1816, 4to. vol. ii. p. 759.
[104] “An Enquiry,” &c. ii. 762.
[105] The few engravings by or after Holbein that have his name or its initials are to be found in his early frontispieces or vignettes to books printed at Basle. In 1548, two delicate wood-cuts, with his name, occur in Cranmer’s Catechism. In the title-page to “a lytle treatise after the maner of an Epystle wryten by the famous clerk, Doctor Urbanus Regius, &c.” Printed by Gwalter Lynne, 1548, 24mo, there is a cut in the same style of art of Christ attended by his disciples, and pointing to a fugitive monk, whose sheep are scattered, and some devoured by a wolf. Above and below are the words “John x. Ezech. xxxiiii. Mich. v. I am the good shepehearde. A good shepehearde geveth his lyfe for the shype. The hyred servaunt flyeth, because he is an hered servaunt, and careth not for the shepe.” On the cut at bottom HANS HOLBEIN. There is a fourth cut of this kind in the British Museum collection with Christ brought before Pilate; and perhaps Holbein might have intended a series of small engravings for the New Testament; but all these are in a simple outline and very different from the cuts in the Dance of Death, or Lyons Bible. It might be difficult to refer to any other engravings belonging to Holbein after the above year.
[106] Brulliot dict. de monogrammes, &c. Munich, 1817, 4to. p. 418, where the letter from De Mechel is given.