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"Death from Lübeck" was a 30 meter painting, showing Death in a long chain-dance with 24 humans - painted life-size - from all classes of society, from pope to infant. Death dances around in the procession, calling people to the dance, but most of the dancers-to-be try to decline. Pictures and text are combined so we have what may be one of the world's first and greatest comic strips.
Lübeck's dance of death was probably ordered after a pest epidemic had swept through the city in the middle of the 14th century. The artist Bernt Notke painted it in 1463 on canvas (unlike most dances of death, it was not drawn directly on the wall). This work of art was exhibited in St Mary's Church. In 1701 it was replaced by a canvas, very close to the original, by Anton Wortmann. Unfortunately, Lübeck's dance of death was destroyed during a bombing in 1942. At least we still have excellent black and white photographs that can give us an idea of what it looked like. Bernt Notke painted another dance of death in Tallinn, Estonia. This allows us to infer that Wortmann's reproduction was faithful to the original, since it has a lot in common with the painting in Estonia.
Throughout the years many artists copied Lübeck's dance of death. C. J. Milde, the painter who restored it in the middle of the 19th century, also made a reproduction. Click here to see the pictures.
Lübeck's dance of death is often considered as the oldest in Germany; a mistake, since the one painted on a wall of the Wengen's Cloister in Ulm was made about 20 years before. But Lübeck's dance of death was by far the most popular and beautiful in the country. It had 24 figures, which were led into the dance by emaciated corpses draped in a shroud. In the background we could see a bucolic landscape and, far away, Lübeck city and its harbour. All details were minutely painted.
As we see it on the photographs, Lübeck's dance of death begins with a corpse who wears a hat and plays the flute. Another corpse, carrying a coffin, plucks at the pope's robe and leads him into the dance. Then come the emperor, the empress, the cardinal, the king, the bishop, the duke (destroyed in 1799), the abbott, the squire, the Carthusian, the mayor, the canon, the nobleman, the doctor, the usurer, the chaplain, the state official, the sacristan, the merchant, the hermit, the peasant, the young man, the young girl and the child in his craddle. Close to the baby, a dead one stands with a scythe in his hands (although it is rather hard to see on the photo). Fourteen laymen and 10 clergymen take part in this dance of death. As always, we can easily identify them. We know the pope by his tiara, the bishop by his mitre and his staff, the nobleman by his falcon, the doctor by his flask full of urine, etc. The usurer holds his purse tightly, but he is not shown in company of a poor man, as in Paris' dance of death. The living ones do not really follow the procession; they stand straight and face the spectators. Each skeleton utters four verses, saying men must follow him, and each living one answers. The original text, written in Lower-German, was translated into modern German during the restoration in 1701. Fortunately Jakob Melle, who was the pastor of St Mary's Church at that time, transcribed what had remained of the original text, so we still have a part of it. We also possess the whole translation into modern German.
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Lübeck's Dance of Death
A Dance of Death in its simplest form still survives in the Marienkirche at Lübeck as 15th-century painting on the walls of a chapel.
Lübeck's dance of death was by far the most popular and beautiful in Europe. It had 24 figures, which were led into the dance by emaciated corpses draped in a shroud. In the background one can see a bucolic landscape and, far away, Lübeck city and its harbour. All details were minutely painted. A few quotes might indicate that Lübeck's dance of death has inspired the one in Berlin.
Basel’s Dance of Death
The famous series at Basel, originally at the Klingenthal, a nunnery in Little Basel, dated from the beginning of the 14th century. In the middle of the 15th century this was moved to the churchyard of the Predigerkloster at Basel, and was restored, probably by Hans Kluber, in 1568. The collapse of the wall in 1805 reduced it to fragments, and only drawings of it remain.
Brueghel’s Dance of Death
This horrifying panel was inspired by one of the medieval literary themes of the Dances of Death, where Death triumphing evenly over all social strata is reflected.
It was painted around 1562 and was in Antwerp as part of Philips van Valkenisse's collections. In 1774 it was listed in the inventory of the Palace of the Granja de San Ildefonso. Later, in 1827, it came to the collections of Museo del Prado, Museo Real at that time.
The painting could be defined as the view of a great desolate landscape of violence, where a deathly army works havoc and routs all living beings. Following specific lines, Brueghel organized the chaos constituted by the countless skeletons. The upper sector is the largest part of the painting and emphasizes destruction of nature: fire has caused a desertic area - influenced by Bosch's iconography - occupied by death or torture instruments. The deathly squadrons of the medium area ravage the crowd: bodies are piled up, captured, crushed by death... In the foreground, the different social hierarchies - the emperor, the cardinal, the pilgrim, the gamblers or the couple of lovers - are all of them victims of the same executioner: Death. This one prevails in the scene riding a starving horse and holding a scythe, inspired in the Apocalypse 6,8: And I saw, and behold, a pale-green horse, and he who was sitting on it - his name is Death, and hell was following him.
This apocalyptic show bears a clear message which Brueghel conveys through pictorial language: death has no mercy and exterminates all living beings.
Holbein’s Dance of Death
With the development of his art the dance of death naturally became a popular theme for the engraver. Many such prints were produced by various German artists, but the most famous version is that of the younger Holbein, issued in 1538 by the brothers Trechsel at Lyons. The designs appear to have been cut on the wood eleven years before the book was published, and their issue was probably held back by reason of the unsettled state of religious opinion in Basle. The series comprises forty-two engravings, the subject expressed with masterly dramatic power, marvellous clearness, and marked reticence of line. Technically they are as perfect as woodcuts can be. There are five sets of proof impressions in existence, and the little book passed through nine editions at Lyons and was printed also in Venice, Augsburg, and Basle. There have been many reissues and reproductions of it, and a facsimile of the first edition was published in Munich in 1884.
Besides the "Dance of Death" Holbein designed a series of initials consisting of an alphabet in which it is the motif. Of Holbein's larger "Dance of Death" more than one hundred editions have appeared. Since Holbein this subject has been treated again and again, especially by German engravers. The most noted of recent dances of death is that by Alfred Rethel, 1848, in which Death is represented as the hero of the Red Republic. Both the conception and the execution of Rethel's engravings are highly artistic and impressive. |
