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

figure is so like the Venus de Medici that it might

have been copied from it.
But what is Eve doing in a Dance of Death? Alas! she took the first
step of that dance in Paradise, and the artists of the olden time did not
deprive 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.
* * * * *
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 Bâle, 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, Bâle offered him facilities for study, in examples
which must have stimulated both his imagination and his