Search Results: Dance of Death from Florilegius

A very scarce, hand-coloured edition of Wenceslaus Hollar's Dance of Death.With 33 plates engraved by Hollar, comprising 31 hand-coloured engravings of the Dance of Death, one hand-coloured engraving of the Dance of Macaber, and two engraved portraits (of Hollar and Holbein).According to the exhaustive Dance of Death website dodedans.com, Hollar's engravings are based primarily on Arnold Birckmann's copies of Holbein's woodcuts. Most of the plates have the initials HB (Holbein) and WH (Hollar), apart from the frontispiece, Mortalitum Nobilitas, which is engraved with HB and DD (David Deuchar?).
Hollar's suite of engravings was first published in 1651 and the copperplates "which appear to have been little used, have been till lately preserved in a noble family" according to Francis Douce's introduction. The original plates have been "retouched, ... with the utmost attention to the preservation of their original spirit and character." English antiquary and curator at the British Museum, Douce would… Read More

Also, Holbein's Bible Cuts, consisting of ninety illustrations on wood with introduction by Thomas Frognall Dibdin. Very good copy of the second edition of Francis Douce's seminal study and bibliography of the Dance of Death (the first appeared in 1833).With engraved frontispiece, two plates of Holbein's Alphabet, 49 plates of Holbein's Dance of Death, five other Dance of Death plates by other artists, and 90 plates of Holbein's Bible Cuts. Numerous vignettes and initials in the text.The woodblocks were cut by George Wilmot Bonner and John Byfield, based on the etchings by Wenceslaus Hollar after Holbein. According to the dodedans.com website, it is likely that John's sister Mary Byfield also contributed to the woodcuts. With the 218-page dissertation providing a history of the Dance of Death and Danse Macaber in books, prints, emblems, paintings, initials, and drawings, from medieval personifications of Death, through Holbein to the modern versions by J. R. Schellenberg, Thomas Rowlandson and J.… Read More

A very good copy of a scarce edition of the Dance of Death.Complete with handcoloured woodcut frontispiece and 10 other woodcuts by an unknown artist (perhaps Wenceslaus Hollar).One of "400 copies plain" from an edition of 460 (60 copies were issued with handcolour). The 11 subjects are: The Count (handcoloured), The Pope Crowning an Emperor, Emperor, Empress, Queen, Bishop, Abbess, Canoness, Soldier, Physician and Preacher. According to the author, "the blocks illustrating this work are a series found in a northern printing office many years ago. They seem to be of considerable age." Elsewhere, he identifies the owner to be Joseph Temple, a Hull printer and newspaper publisher. According to the exhaustive Dance of Death website dodedans.com, the woodcuts here follow the 1816 re-issue of Wenceslaus Hollar's reworking of Arnold Birckmann's copies of Holbein's woodcuts. The engravings lack any artist's initials or signatures.Thomas Tindall Wildridge (1858-1928) was a librarian, antiquarian, artist and… Read More

A very good copy of Scottish engraver David Deuchar's Dance of Death.Second edition of 1803, with the plates lacking the decorative frames used in the first edition of 1786.With 47 plates engraved by Deuchar, comprising 46 engravings of figures in the Dances of Death, one engraving of the scabbard, two frontispieces (one with a self-portrait in profile and one after Chretien Mechel with Deuchar's name replaced), and one engraved portrait of Holbein. Total of 50 copperplates.According to the exhaustive Dance of Death website dodedans.com, Deuchar's engravings are based primarily on Wenceslaus Hollar's reworking of Arnold Birckmann's copies of Holbein's woodcuts. Many of the plates have the initials HB (Holbein) and DD (Deuchar) or Deuchar fecit.Inspired by the re-appearance of the Dance of Death in the 1780s, many English artists John Bewick, Thomas Rowlandson and Richard Dagley would all bring out their versions in the Regency era. With two frontispieces, title page, portrait of Holbein, two-page… Read More

Very good suite of five (of six) woodcuts from this scarce edition of the Dance of Death.Five large dramatic anti-socialist engravings accompanied by lettered verses by Robert Reineck, inspired by the revolutionary uprisings suppressed by the military in Germany in 1848.The five plates are: Death rises from the grave to be greeted by Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; Death holding scales in front of a crowd at a tavern; Death delivers a sword to the people; Death stands on a barricade; and Death as victor riding on horseback over corpses. (Missing plate 2, Death on horseback riding into town). The woodcuts after Rethel's designs were supervised by Hugo Burkner, executed by Carl Friedrich Robert Berger 1, (Richard Julius Jungtow 2, not present), Oskar Friedrich Schmidt 3, Gustav Richard Steinbrecker 4, Carl August Zsheckel 5 and August Gaber, and printed by F. A. Brockhaus. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, it was for his Dance of Death, "executed in a technique founded upon that of Durer, and… Read More

Very good copy of a pirate edition of the John Bewick woodcuts
Rare copy of this delightful Georgian oddity
(Listed by Francis Douce as example "XII," chapter 8, page 119, The Dance of Death, 1833.)
With 51 woodcuts in a distinctive octagonal frame.
Bewick's copy of Holbein's Dance of Death was published by his mentor T. Hodgson in 1793. The woodcuts were re-used for new editions in 1795 and 1801 by printer Robert Bassam, and were probably destroyed in a fire in his printshop in 1803.The plates here include a version of Bewick's original frontispiece with numerous skeletons leading royalty and aristocracy out of a castle town to a grave. The cuts are an amusing mix of medieval costumes, religiously copying Holbein and Hollar for the royal and clerical figures, and the Georgian, depicting modern gents in bicorne hats, coats, gilet waistcoats, and breeches, and ladies in elegant gowns with ostrich plumes in their hair.
According to Douce, "Emblems of Mortality, Printed for Whittingham and Arliss,… Read More

New edition with 24 figures by Mansfield after Schellenberg
First thus with new half-page engravings by Viennese engraver Johan George Mansfeld after the originals by Swiss artist and entomologist Johann Rudolf Schellenberg published in 1785.
Complete with frontispiece and 24 fine plates depicting allegorical scenes with a skeleton of death (Freund Hein) visiting people from different levels of society.
Includes frontispiece Memento Mori, lovers, desperation, vanity, balloonist, schoolteacher, judge, womanizer, baby in swaddling clothes, monk, poor man, lottery player, Viennese and Roman women, loan shark, glutton, tightrope walker, Masonic lodge, press gang, Berthold Schwarz the alchemist, gentleman's duel, bookseller, woman teacher, quack doctor and the authors.
The final plate shows the author Musaus and artist Schellenberg in an embrace with the skeleton of Death.
Bookplate of Richardi M. Meyer (1860-1914), German philologist, literary historian, scholar and writer.
Some scuffing to the buckram… Read More

Good copy of Heinrich Lödel's reproductions of Holbein's Alphabet of Death.The painter Hans Holbein's Dance of Death Alphabet, fully reproduced in 24 woodcuts from the Dresden originals for the first time by H. Lödel in Göttingen.According to the exhaustive Dance of Death website dodedans.com, Holbein's alphabet of Death was first used in 1524. Holbein's designs were cut in small woodblocks in incredible detail by the engraver Hans Lutzelburger. These are really dynamic scenes, full of action and drama. In many, two skeletons grapple with their victim, violently grabbing, pulling and murdering with boney arms to fill the tiny square behind the initial letter with action.
All 24 initials printed in black, with decorative borders in sepia by the painter Georg Osterwald.
Heinrich Lödel (1798-1861) was a German painter and etcher, based in Göttingen from 1819. He was later the university engraver at Georg-August University.
Brown cloth spine with gilt title label, amateurishly repaired marble… Read More

Fine delicate engravings by Chretien de Mechel or Christian von Mechel (and Bartholomaus Hubner) after works by the Renaissance master Hans Holbein.
Incomplete copy of the first edition of these suites of engravings and sepia aquatints.
Three complete suites (Dance of Death*, the Passion of Christ and Portraits), plus several additional plates, altogether 40 engraved plates and two engraved vignettes.
Title page, 14 pages of descriptive text to the Triumph of Death with two engraved vignettes, 47 engravings on 12 plates of the Triumph of Death (Le Triomphe de la Mort) and two plates entitled Triumph of Wealth (Triumphus Divitiarum) and Triumph of Poverty (Triumphus Paupertatus); frontispiece and 12 plates to The Passion of Our Lord (La Passion de Notre Seigneur); 2 double-page fold-out engravings A Scene of the Insurrection of the Peasants and The Prophet Samuel Declared to Saul; 1 plate of the costume of a young woman of Basel from Costumes d'hommes et de femmes du seizième siècle; and 10 plates of… Read More

A good copy of the Dance of Death with lithographs after Jacques-Antony Chovin/Matthaus Merian. Complete with 42 lithographs reworked from Chovin/Merian with backgrounds removed, some reversed.The 42 subjects are: The Preacher's Word, Ossuary (Charnel House), Pope, Emperor, Empress, King, Queen, Cardinal, Bishop, Duke, Duchess, Earl, Abbot, Knight, Lawyer, Alderman, Canon, Doctor, Nobleman, Lady, Merchant, Abbess, Cripple, Hermit, Young Man, Usurer, Maiden, Minstrel, Herald, Judge, Headsman, Jester, Pedlar, Blind Man, Jew, Pagan, Paganess, Cook, Peasant, Painter, Painter's Wife, Adam and Eve.Unlike Holbein's skeleton of Death, the figure of Death here is a gruesome cadaver with rotten flesh still on the bone. In some images, the skin splits to reveal worms, intestines and other organs.The lithographs are copied from Matthaus Merian's originals first published in 1621 or Chovin's copies from 1744. Merian copied the wall paintings just after they had been restored by Emanuel Bock in 1614-1616. By the… Read More

Lovely suite of the ultra-rare Dance of Death etchings by the genius printmaker and painter Daniel ChodowieckiVery good copy of this meticulous early 20th-century German reprintNumber 856 of a limited edition of 1,000Complete with title-page with engraved vignette, 12 copperplates and 74 pages of text. Decorative front cover in gold and black designed by Ernst NicolasDaniel Chodowiecki's legendary Dance of Death sequence was never published in book form. Instead, the twelve figures only appeared in the Ravenberg Calendar, 1792.There are some unusual subjects along with the usual clerics and royalty. A fish wife killed by Death with a scythe, a prostitute whipped by a skeleton with a cat'o-nine-tails, a baby stolen by a winged skeleton while the mother sleeps, a swordsman losing a duel to a skeleton with a bone, a soldier on guard duty surprised by Death, etc.For this edition, Chodowiecki's engravings were reprinted on a hand press at Meisenbarth Riffarth engraving company in Berlin.Daniel Niklaus… Read More