Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 | Page 9

her of her due precedence. She leads the Dance, but with this difference from those who follow her:--they, cowering and muffled, go off the scene with Death; she, upright in her naked innocence and beauty, brings him on. Poor Eve! she had her punishment and made her atonement to man for leading him to death, in becoming the source and the joy and solace of his life; but it was not for the artists of the Dance of Death to embody this phase of her existence. So essential a part of the Dance is the temptation of Eve, that the whole subject was concentrated into the representation of that event by a German engraver, in this singular manner:--Adam and Eve stand by the Tree of Knowledge, around which twines the serpent, from whom Eve is receiving the apple; but the trunk of the tree is formed by the twisted legs and the ribs of a skeleton, from the head and the outstretched arms of which spring the branches and the foliage. It is worthy of remark, that many painters, the greatest of them (Raphael) at their head, have represented the tempter of Eden as a beautiful woman, whose body terminates in a serpent. It was a mistake on their part to do so. They knew how much of the Devil a woman might have in her, and how irresistible a temptress she is; but they forgot, that, on this occasion, woman, not man, was tempted.
There was a Dance of Death in Old St. Paul's Church, in London,--the one burned down in the Great Fire; and another in the beautiful little parish church of Stratford-on-Avon,--but this, too, has disappeared. It is interesting to know that they were there, and that Shakspeare saw them; for he has woven some of the thoughts that they awakened in his mind Into a noble passage in one of his historical plays. We shall recur to it in examining Holbein's Dance.
The Dance was represented, and still exists, in one very singular place. At Lucerne, in Switzerland, it appears upon a covered bridge, in the triangles formed by the beams which support the roof. The groups, of which there are thirty-six, are double, looking away from each other, and are so arranged, that the passenger, on entering the bridge, has before him a long array of these grotesque and gloomy pictures. The motive for placing the Dance in such a place is unknown, and it is difficult to conjecture what it was. It could hardly have been to enforce the old adage,--Speak well of the bridge that carries you over.
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While we have been thus endeavoring to discover the origin of the Dance of Death, what it was, and what it meant, Holbein has been waiting more patiently than he was wont, for us to see who he was, and why the Dance, which was known three hundred years at least before he was born, is now universally spoken of as his.
Hans Holbein, the greatest painter of the German school, came honestly by his talent and his name. He was the son of Hans Holbein, a painter, who was the son of another Hans Holbein, also a painter. The first Hans was a poor painter; the second a good one; and the third so great, that the world, when it speaks their common name, means only him. The father and grandfather were born at Augsburg, in Bavaria, and of late years it has been asserted by mousing antiquaries that the grandson was born there too; but this, perhaps, is not quite certain; and it is much pleasanter to adhere to the ancient faith, and believe that he was born at that strange old Bale, in sight of that great Dance, the reproduction, or rather recreation, of which was to make so great a part of his fame,--especially as he was quite surely an inhabitant of the town at such tender years, that the veriest Know-Nothing in the place would not have deprived him of his citizenship.
Of Holbein's life we unfortunately know very little. He showed his talent early, as all the great painters have done. Conscious of his abilities, he devoted himself eagerly to the study of the profession to which his genius urged him. He learned not only painting, but engraving, the sculpture of metals, and architecture; and of all these, it will be remembered, Bale offered him facilities for study, in examples which must have stimulated both his imagination and his ambition. He did not lack encouragement; for the nobles and burghers of Bale had begun to acquire a taste for the arts, which their ruder fathers contemned; and they had, at this time, a university in their city, which made them acquainted with Cicero and the orators, of whom Aeneas Sylvius