Having thus given the History of this celebrated Work, we are now to inquire, in the first Place, whether the original Painting at Basil were, or not, painted by Holbein; and, in the second, whether the Imagines Mortis were either designed or engraven by him.
As to the first of these Questions it is to be observed, that Merian, whom we have above mentioned, has related that this Picture at Basil was painted during the sitting of the Council before mentioned, which met in 1431, and sat either fifteen, according to some, or something more than seventeen Years, according to other Authors; so that the Painting now under Consideration must have been done between the Years 1439, when the Plague broke out, and 1446, or 1448, when the Council broke up; now it is certain that Holbein was not born till 1498[16]: nor do we find that he was ever employed on the Painting at Basil, even so much as to retouch it. Hugh Klauber, who repaired it in 1568, is recorded, and it is not probable that, if it ever had been touched upon by Holbein, that Fact should, in his own native City, have been passed over in Silence: On the contrary, it is more likely that an Opportunity should have been rather sought to reveal it[17].
From these Considerations it appears pretty evidently, that Holbein has no Claim to the Painting at Basil: We now proceed, therefore, to the second Inquiry, viz. Whether he either designed or engraved the original Cuts to the Imagines Mortis, and here it may first be necessary to state what Reasons there may be for supposing them his.
Nicolas Borbonius, a Poet contemporary with Holbein, has addressed to him an Epigram “De Morte picta, a Hanso Pictore nobili[18],” from which it is inferred that he painted a Dance of Death; and Sandrart relates that in the Year 1627, in a Conversation with Rubens, at which he was present, the Imagines Mortis was stiled Holbein’s, as will appear from the following Passage, translated by Mr. Warton from Joach. Sandrart, Academ. Pict. Part II. Lib. iii. Cap. 7. P. 241, “I also well remember that in the Year 1627, when Paul Rubens came to Utrecht to visit Handorst, being escorted both coming from, and returning to Amsterdam, by several Artists; as we were in the Boat, the Conversation fell upon Holbein’s Book of Cuts representing the Dance of Death, that Rubens gave them the highest Encomiums, advising me, who was then a young Man, to set the highest Value upon them; informing me, at the same Time, that he, in his Youth, had copied them.” Warton’s Observations on Spenser, first Edit. P. 231, in a Note, where is also inserted a Translation from the same Work, P. 238, in the following Words, “But, in the Fish-Market there” [at Basil] “may be seen his” [Holbein’s] “admirable Dance of Peasants, where also, in the same public Manner, is shewn his Dance of Death; where, by a Variety of Figures, it is demonstrated that Death spares neither Popes, Emperors, Princes, &c. as may be seen in his most elegant wooden Cuts of the same Work.”
In Bullart’s Academie des Sciences, Tom. II. P. 412, is a Passage, of which the following is a Translation: “Nevertheless, he” [Holbein] “has not sent any Thing into the World which is not painted with the last Degree of Perfection. The Inhabitants of Basil have an excellent Witness of this in their Town-House: It is his Piece of the Dance of Death, which he has reduced into Colours, after having engraven them very neatly on Wood; and which appeared so excellent to the learned Erasmus, that, after having published his Praises, he invited Holbein to draw his Picture, in order that he might have the Happiness of being represented by so skilful a Hand.”
Mons. Patin, in the Catalogue of Holbein’s Works, prefixed to his Edition of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, in Latin, closes his List with Words to the following Effect, “He also engraved several Things upon Wood, among which are his Scripture Cuts, and Dance of Death, vulgarly called Toden Tans; from which that Picture is not very different, which was painted from the Life by the Hand, as some think, of Holbein himself, and is enclosed by wooden Pallisadoes from Strangers in the Cemetery of the Predicants, in the Suburbs of St. John, at Basil:” And Prior takes it for so acknowledged a Fact that Holbein painted the well-known Dance of Death, that, in his Ode to the Memory of Colonel George Villiers, he thus alludes to it:
“In vain we think that free-will’d Man has Pow’r
To hasten or protract th’ appointed Hour.
Our Term of Life depends not on our Deed;