Before our Birth, our Fun’ral was decreed.
Nor aw’d by Foresight, nor misled by Chance,
Imperious Death directs the Ebon Lance,
Peoples great Henry’s Tombs, and leads up Holbein’s Dance.”
By “great Henry’s Tombs,” Henry the Seventh’s Chapel in Westminster-Abbey is meant.
To refute by minute Examination the several Errors in the above Citations, would be an almost endless Task; it is sufficient here to remark, that the Passage from Borbonius is too general to ascertain, whether he means a Dance of Death, or a single Figure; that Sandrart or Rubens’s Declaration is too far distant from the Time, to be of any great Weight; as is also Patin’s Assertion, that Holbein actually engraved the Imagines Mortis: And surely, if it had been either designed or engraven by him, Frellon, for whom so many Editions were printed, would not have failed to have mentioned it in some of them, when we find, that in the Editions of the Scripture Cuts, which he printed, he has inserted a Latin Poem of some Length, and also a Greek Epigram, both by Borbonius, with a Translation of this latter into Latin, all to prove, that the Cuts were the Work of Holbein. It is further to be observed (as one Reason for ascribing these Cuts to Holbein) that a Cut of the Imagines Mortis, which occurs P. 36 of this Edition, but the Mark is there purposely omitted, has to it in the original the Letters H L thus conjoined
which Papillon asserts, is one of the Marks of Holbein; and Christian de Mechel, Engraver to the Elector Palatine, seems so well convinced of their being really at least designed by Holbein, that he has inserted the Dance of Death, as represented in the Imagines Mortis, among the rest of his Works, which he is now publishing; but the Number of Cuts there given, is no more than Forty-Six.
It were much to be wished that Mechel had informed us, from what he had copied the Dance of Death; whether, as he probably did, from Drawings; and, if so, where those Drawings were to be found, and on what further Evidence he had ventured to ascribe them to Holbein; for, as will presently appear, there is very great Reason, at least, for doubting the Fact, notwithstanding that the four first Cuts of the Imagines Mortis occur among the Cuts to the Old Testament, printed in 1539, and which we are told expressly in a Poem, and also in an Epigram, of Borbonius, prefixed to them, are of the Hand of Holbein; but whether by this we are to understand, that he designed or engraved them, or both, we are left to seek. After having thus ventured to question in general Terms, Holbein’s Title to the Merit of this Work, it is incumbent on me to shew on what my Doubts are founded, and this I am prepared to do; for, in the Dedication to the Edition of the Imagines Mortis, in 1538, is a Passage, of which I here insert a faithful Translation:
“To return then to our Cuts of Death, we now very justly regret the Death of him who has here designed such elegant Figures, exceeding as much all the Examples hitherto, as the Paintings of Apelles, or of Zeuxis, exceed the Moderns. For his sorrowful Histories, with their Descriptions severely verified, excite such Admiration in the Beholders, that they think the Figures of Death appear as if quite alive, and the Living as if dead. Which makes me think that Death, fearing that this excellent Painter would paint him so much alive, that he should no longer be feared as Death, and that, for this Reason, he himself would become immortal; for this very Cause hastened so much his Days, that he could not finish several other Cuts already by him traced, and among others that of the Waggoner overthrown and bruised under his overturned Waggon; the Wheels and Horses of which are there represented so frightfully, that as much Horror is occasioned to view their Downfall, as Delight to contemplate the Liquorishness of one Figure of Death, who is secretly sucking through a Reed the Wine from the emptied Cask: To which imperfect Histories, as well as to the inimitable Rainbow, no one has dared to put the last Hand.”