In BULLART’s _Academie des Sciences_, Tom. II. P. 412, is a Passage, of which the following is a Translation: “Nevertheless, he” [HOLBEIN] “has not sent any Thing into the World which is not painted with the last Degree of Perfection. The Inhabitants of Basil have an excellent Witness of this in their Town-House: It is his Piece of the _Dance of Death_, which he has reduced into Colours, after having engraven them very neatly on Wood; and which appeared so excellent to the learned ERASMUS, that, after having published his Praises, he invited HOLBEIN to draw his Picture, in order that he might have the Happiness of being represented by so skilful a Hand.”
Mons. PATIN, in the Catalogue of HOLBEIN’s Works, prefixed to his Edition of ERASMUS’s _Praise of Folly_, in Latin, closes his List with Words to the following Effect, “He also engraved several Things upon Wood, among which are his _Scripture Cuts_, and _Dance of Death_, vulgarly called _Toden Tans_; from which that Picture is not very different, which was painted from the Life by the Hand, as some think, of HOLBEIN himself, and is enclosed by wooden Pallisadoes from Strangers in the Cemetery of the Predicants, in the Suburbs of St. JOHN, at Basil:” And PRIOR takes it for so acknowledged a Fact that HOLBEIN painted the well-known _Dance of Death_, that, in his _Ode to the Memory of Colonel GEORGE VILLIERS_, he thus alludes to it:
“In vain we think that free-will’d Man has Pow’r To hasten or protract th’ appointed Hour. Our Term of Life depends not on our Deed; Before our Birth, our Fun’ral was decreed. Nor aw’d by Foresight, nor misled by Chance, Imperious Death directs the Ebon Lance, Peoples great HENRY’s Tombs, and leads up HOLBEIN’s Dance.”
By “great HENRY’s Tombs,” HENRY the Seventh’s Chapel in Westminster-Abbey is meant.
To refute by minute Examination the several Errors in the above Citations, would be an almost endless Task; it is sufficient here to remark, that the Passage from BORBONIUS is too general to ascertain, whether he means a _Dance of Death_, or a single Figure; that SANDRART or RUBENS’s Declaration is too far distant from the Time, to be of any great Weight; as is also PATIN’s Assertion, that HOLBEIN actually engraved the IMAGINES MORTIS: And surely, if it had been either designed or engraven by him, FRELLON, for whom so many Editions were printed, would not have failed to have mentioned it in some of them, when we find, that in the Editions of the _Scripture Cuts_, which he printed, he has inserted a Latin Poem of some Length, and also a Greek Epigram, both by BORBONIUS, with a Translation of this latter into Latin, all to prove, that the Cuts were the Work of HOLBEIN. It is further to be observed (as one Reason for ascribing these Cuts to HOLBEIN) that a Cut of the IMAGINES MORTIS, which occurs P. 36 of this Edition, but the Mark is there purposely omitted, has to it in the original the Letters H L thus conjoined [Illustration: HL] which PAPILLON asserts, is one of the Marks of HOLBEIN; and CHRISTIAN DE MECHEL, Engraver to the Elector Palatine, seems so well convinced of their being really at least designed by HOLBEIN, that he has inserted the _Dance of Death_, as represented in the IMAGINES MORTIS, among the rest of his Works, which he is now publishing; but the Number of Cuts there given, is no more than Forty-Six.