Gilles Corrozet

“ Hans of Luxemburg, "otherwise Franck," a form-cutter ("formschneider") , whose full name is to be found attached to the so-called "Little Dance of Death," an alphabet by Holbein, impressions of which are in the British Museum. His signature ("H. L. F. 1522") is also found appended to another alphabet; to a cut of a fight in a forest, dated also 1522; and to an engraved title-page in a German New Testament of the year following. ”

“ It is of course true, as he also points out, that a copy with the graver can never quite faithfully follow [21] an original which has been cut with the knife,—more especially, it may be added, when the cutter is a supreme craftsman like him of Luxemburg. But against etched, lithographed, phototyped and otherwise-processed copies, these of Messrs. Bonner and John Byfield have one incontestable advantage: they are honest attempts to repeat by the same method,—that is, in wood,—the original and incomparable woodcuts of Hans Lutzelburger. ”

“ He [13] was resident in Basle up to the autumn of 1526, before which time, according to the above argument, the drawings must have been produced; he had already designed an Alphabet of Death; and, moreover, on the walls of the cemetery of the Dominican monastery at Basle there was a famous wall-painting of the Dance of Death, which would be a perpetual stimulus to any resident artist. Finally, and this is perhaps the most important consideration of all, the designs are in Holbein's manner. ”

“ The Dance of Death has been frequently copied. Mr. W. J. Linton enumerates a Venice reproduction of 1545; and a set (enlarged) by Jobst Dienecker of Augsburg in 1554. Then there [19] is the free copy, once popular with our great grandfathers, by Bewick's younger brother John, which Hodgson of Newcastle published in 1789 under the title of Emblems of Mortality. Wenceslaus Hollar etched thirty of the designs in 1651, and in 1788 forty-six of them were etched by David Deuchar. ”

“ The Berlin drawings must therefore have been executed subsequently to the woodcuts; and as one of them, that representing the Emperor, is dated "1527," we get a date before which both the woodcuts, and the designs for the woodcuts, [12] must have been prepared. It is generally held that they were so prepared circa 1524 and 1525, the date of the Peasants' War, of the state of feeling excited by which they exhibit evident traces. ”

“ But why the cuts of the latter, which, as we have shown above, were printed circa 1526, were not published at Lyons until 1538; and why Holbein's name was withheld in the Preface to the book of that year, are still unexplained. [18] The generally accepted supposition is that motives of timidity, arising from the satirical and fearlessly unsparing character of the designs, may be answerable both for delay in the publication and mystification in the "Preface." ”

“ They have also been rendered in photo-lithography for an edition issued by H. Noel Humphreys, in 1868; and for the [20] Holbein Society in 1879. In 1886, Dr. F. Lippmann edited for Mr. Quaritch a set of reproductions of the engraver's proofs in the Berlin Museum; and the editio princeps has been facsimiled by one of the modern processes for Hirth of Munich, as vol. x. of the Liebhaber-Bibliothek, 1884.
The Present Issue
The copies given in the present issue are impressions from the blocks engraved in 1833 for Douce's Holbein's Dance of Death. They are the best imitations in wood, says Mr. ”

“ Maledicta terra in opere tuo, in laboribus comedes cunctis diebus vitæ tuæ, donec reuertaris, &c.
Genesis iii.
Mauldicte en ton labeur la terre.
En labeur ta uie useras,
Iusques que la Mort te soubterre. ”

“ Pouure homme de ce corps mortel?
[144]
[145]
Of this edition of Holbein's "The Dance of Death," seven hundred and fifty copies have been printed on Japan vellum, for the Scott-Thaw Co., by the Heintzemann Press, July, MCMIII.
Transcriber's Note: In the work used for this digitization, each pair of facing pages has the Latin biblical quotation at the top of the left page printed in red, the French quatrain at the bottom of the left page printed in black, and the illustration (numbered above, and captioned below) on the right page, opposite the text. ”