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THE DANCE OF DEATFL 27 In 1780, Chretien de Mechel, a well-known artist and printseller at Basil, published forty-five engravings of a Death's Dance, as part of the works o...
Show more THE DANCE OF DEATFL 27 In 1780, Chretien de Mechel, a well-known artist and printseller at Basil, published forty-five engravings of a Death's Dance, as part of the works of Holbein, of which he intends to give a series. Mr. Coxe, in his travels, has given some account of this work, and informs us that they are done after some small drawings by Holbein, sketched with a pen, and slightly shaded with Indian ink ; that these drawings were purchased by Mr. Fleichman, of Strasburg, at Cro-zat's sale at Paris, and are now in the collection of Prince Gallitzin, Minister from the Empress of Russia to the court of Vienna, at which last place he had frequent opportunities of seeing and admiring them. He further adds, that Hollar copied these drawings, an opinion which will admit of some doubt. Mons. De MecheFs remark, that from the dresses and character of several of the figures, it is probable the drawings were sketched in England, as well as Mr. Coxe's conjecture that they were in the Arundelian collection, will appear but slightly founded to any one conversant in the dresses of the French and German nations at that period, to which they bear at least an equal resemblance: again, one of the cuts represents a King sitting at table under a canopy, powdered with Fleurs de lis, whose figure has a remarkable affinity to the portraits of Francis I. If these drawings were copied from the celebrated wooden cuts, they must have
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28 THE DANCE OF DEATH. been done after the year 1547, as eight of them did not appear till that time. But it has entirely escaped the knowledge of all the biographers of Holbei...
Show more 28 THE DANCE OF DEATH. been done after the year 1547, as eight of them did not appear till that time. But it has entirely escaped the knowledge of all the biographers of Holbein, that he painted a Dance of Death in fresco, upon the walls of the palace of Whitehall, which was consumed by fire in 1697. This curious fact is ascertained from two sets of nineteen very indifferent etchings from the wooden cuts, by one Nieuhoff; they were never published, but copies of them presented to the artist's friends, with manuscript dedications in the Dutch language, in which he speaks of the above-mentioned paintings at Whitehall. The book has the following title engraved in a border: '' Imagines Mortis, or the Dead Dance of Hans Holbeyn, Painter of King Henry the Vlllth." The author, in one of these dedications, addressed to the Right Honourable William Benting, informs him, that cc he had met with the scarce little work of H. Holbeyn in wood, which he had himself painted as large as life in fresco, on the walls of Whitehall; that he had followed the original as nearly as possible, and had presumed to lay his copy before him as being born in the same palace; that he considered the partiality which every one has for the place of his nativity, and that therefore an account of what was curie t 3 and remarkable therein, and of what was then no more, as being destroyed by a fatal fire, must of course prove acceptable, particularly as there were hardly any more re-
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