The Dance of Death, Panel by Panel.
Clasped in the arms of Death, no one escapes its grip, a fatal one to be sure, but here anguish conceals its own depressive force and displays defiance through sarcasm or the grimace of a mocking smile, without triumph, as if, knowing it is done for, laughter is the only answer.” Julia Kristeva on the Dance of Death in her essay ‘Holbein’s Dead Christ‘
Modern images of the moment of death are predominately photojournalistic in nature, with an incidental, documentary approach, however intentional this may actually be. Although we may assume a certain intent in publishing such an image, most likely a desire to induce empathy, this is not necessary for the creation of an effective photograph. In contrast, the late medieval motif of the Dance of the Death, which also depicts the moment of death, emphasizes the allegorical intent of the image: no matter who you are or what your level of privilege may be, death can arrive for you at any moment. The king, merchant, peasant or baby that death ensnares is, in fact, every king, merchant, peasant or baby. The language of the Dance of Death, despite depicting the moment when death comes to claim another victim, is more akin to that of the editorial cartoon or comic strip than the documentary photograph. These images are meant to inspire contemplation and fear, not empathy.
The Dance of Death motifs first appeared in paintings, especially frescoes on the walls of churches or graveyards. The first known Dance of Death, now lost to time, is thought to have been painted in 1424 on the wall of the charnel house, a vault for storing bones unearthed when digging new graves, at Cimetière des Innocents in Paris. The composition, a single horizontal line of figures starting with the most powerful on the left and descending in social station to the right, set the template for future Dances. This composition emphasizes the allegorical and editorial in its very structure. The wealthy and powerful come first and everyone else follows. But death takes them all. The ‘dance’ depicted is that of the farandole, or community dance, where hands are joined in a line, thus uniting all of society in Death’s grip.
Unlike a single, traditional image (rectangle or square), the Dance of Death is ‘read’ rather than seen. The reader starts at one end and progresses to the conclusion, as with a comic book. From the beginning, the Dance of Death incorporated text, and in the case of the Saint Innocents mural also depicted a narrator. At each end of the sequence, the author sat at a desk in a separate book-lined space, or comic panel, if you will. The text in the author panels was contained in unfurled scrolls (or banderoles), again conjuring the comic’s modern caption box. Each station in the line of the Innocents mural had accompanying text, most likely painted below the images, as it appears in subsequent and surviving murals throughout Europe. It is fair to assume the text came first, inspired by the 13th-century French literary genre Vado Mori (I prepare myself to die), in which people of various social classes rail in verse against the inevitability of death. But it is the introduction of the mocking voice of Death addressing his victim that gives the text of the Dance of Death mural its mischievous sting:
Death:
Patriarch, it is not by lowering your head only
that you can be acquitted.
The cross of Lorraine which is so dear to you,
Another will receive it: it is all justice.
Think no more of honours,
You will never be Pope at Rome;
You are now called to account (of your acts).
The foolish hopes deceive man.
Death’s mocking is then followed by the words of the vanquished lamenting the futility of their striving for position and honour. It is only the Hermit who deviates from this and seems to accept his fate.
The Hermit
Despite a hard and lonely life,
Death does not grant a delay.
Everyone sees it and must be silent.
I pray to God to give me a gift:
Let him erase all my sins.
I am pleased with all the benefits of
which I have profited by His grace.
Who is not happy with what he has, has nothing.
We have only the prints of Guy Marchant’s drawings of the Dance of Death in the Cimetière des Innocents to go by, as the mural was destroyed in 1669 in order, it is said, to widen a road. Marchant’s drawings were reproduced in a popular pamphlet that enjoyed multiple editions. The pioneering anatomist Andreas Vesalius, author and illustrator of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), is said to have developed his interest in anatomy after examining the bones in the charnel houses of the Innocents cemetery. It is easy to imagine the seed for one of his most famous images from De Humani, that of a skeleton contemplating a skull, being planted as Vesalius contemplated the first known mural of the Dance of Death.
The first known picture of a printing press appears in a similar context. An image in La grat danse macabre des homes (Lyon, 1499), of which only two copies survive, depicts Death in its familiar skeletal form disrupting a book shop, interrupting the work of a compositor placing type, and halting the printing of a book. Contemplating this image, I wonder if the printer could be alluding to a deeper purpose in his work – to cheat Death’s erasure of the words of man through the means of reproduction. Pondering the relationship between death and the written word leads to a rabbit hole of associations, from images of Saint Jerome translating the bible with only a candle and a skull on his desk to the popularity of the skull as an image on ex libris, perhaps serving as much as a warning to a book thief as a memento mori.
Most people encounter the Dance of Death in book form, as I did in the dustiest of bookstores, Hood Used Books, in Lawrence, Kansas. More specifically, I stumbled upon Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death, which is the most widely known and reproduced iteration of the genre. I found my copy among bright spines of pop art catalogues and monographs on Impressionism, its black spine with faded gold type standing out in the negative, a slice of darkness among stripes of colour. It is from 1947 and, written in pencil next to the price of $12.50, is ‘out-of-print’. But, of course, that applies only to this edition, for Holbein’s Dance of Death is never out of print and likely will never be (it has recently been reissued as a Penguin Classic). The cover of my copy, also black with gold embossing, depicts Death beating a drum, framed in an oval that contains the words: Vitas Brevis, Ars Longa (Life is Short, Art is Long).
Given that my own artistic output at the time leaned towards punkish images of apocalypse and alienation, I no doubt instantly responded to the social critique imbedded in Holbein’s images. And I must have recognized something of the editorial cartoon, if only in the familiar configuration of a single image with a caption below. Due to the need for a separate vignette for each page in the sequence, the original dance, the farandole, or community dance, is lost. Holbein was doubtless aware of this, given that it is likely he would have seen Guy Marchant’s drawings of the Innocents mural, which paired figures but retained the pillars of the charnel house and the joined hands of the dance. Holbein’s choice to isolate the figures, imbuing each image with details specific to the individual’s station in society, is not insignificant. Indeed, Holbein’s other leap forward, to take the Death images out of the symbolic and into the everyday, realistic lived space of late medieval life, would not be possible, or at least quite clumsy in a single image mural (though it’s fun to imagine something akin to a Bruegel crowd composition applied to this theme).
With his emphasis on specifics, Holbein expands what was previously a moral lesson — Death as the great equalizer, putting all social stations on notice — into the realm of social criticism that is tied to the reform ideas of his time. For instance, anti-papacy sentiment is expressed in the image of Death coming for the pope. Demons symbolize corruption and Holbein deepens the reformist critique by depicting the king kissing the foot of the pope, in contrast to Jesus washing the feet of the poor. A corrupting demon makes only one other appearance, blowing bellows into the ear of the Senator to mask the words of the imploring poor man at his shoulder. Such details abound and reward deeper viewing. The nun is distracted from her prayers by a handsome minstrel, as a broken hourglass, a recurring symbol of approaching death, lies broken at her feet. The astrologer points to his model of the universe as Death presents a skull, an object considered more worthy of his contemplation. In contrast, the Ploughman, unlike the nobles and other powerful characters, who resist or ignore Death, is the beneficiary of Death’s help as it implores his horses with a whip towards the setting sun.
One image I return to, which is among ten plates that only appears in later editions, is the Idiot Fool. Perhaps this one captures my attention because it is hard to identify our modern equivalent, or perhaps there is something in the specific details that I find compelling. His misshapen head, exposed member, finger in mouth and what the text refers to as a ‘bladder bauble’ makes one wonder if such a fool actually crossed Holbein’s path at one time. Unlike many of the other encounters, which are set in urban scenes, the one between the Idiot Fool and Death takes place in a rocky, barren landscape. Death plays the bagpipes and gently tugs on the fool’s clothing, while the fool looks quizzical and even entertained, unlike most of the other victims, who regard Death with fear and alarm. Is the fool’s lack of concern due to a deficiency of mind or does he, like the Hermit, benefit from a life lived without worldly desire? Holbein’s images also contain objects and details contemporary to the time, a feature highlighted in the introduction to my edition. The writer notes the variety of instruments, costumes, furniture, etc, ending with “Whatever one’s profession, business, or special hobby, he is sure to find relevant interesting illustrations in the following pages”, as if trying to ignore that the subject of death is quite relevant enough.
Holbein’s Dance of Death was printed in 1538. It was immensely popular. In addition to the eleven editions published in the subsequent twenty years or so, it inspired around a hundred unauthorized copies or imitations. Most notable of the subsequent versions influenced by Holbein’s imagery are the dramatic and elaborate series by the Baroque artists Rudolf and Conrad Meyer, whose Sterbensspiegel was published in 1650. By the 1800s, many examples of the genre return to a stripped-down allegorical form, isolating the figures without backgrounds and eliminating other characters or symbolic props. In one example, a series of delightful 19th-century German ceramics, the context is removed completely. Nonetheless, by virtue of the indomitable structure of the motif and playful text, Death is still the mirthful and mocking equalizer even if the pointed editorial content is subdued.
However, Alfred Rethel’s 1848 Auch ein Totentanz (Yet Another Dance of Death) marked a departure in the genre. Rethel’s Dance of Death is a conservative response to the 1848 revolution, though art historians disagree about Rethel’s political leanings. Yet the message is unmistakable. Unfolding in a sequential series with text below, Rethel’s Dance of Death recasts Death not as a mocking and mirthful dancer but as a political seducer who manipulates the mob for his own purposes. When printed on a broadside, as it was, the six-panel series would call to mind the classic six-panel structure of modern comics and the visual language of editorial cartoons. For example, the first panel presents vices such as Frenzy, Falsehood and Bloodthirstiness as women, who greet and aid Death as he is woken by the revolutionary cries of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’. The careful viewer will notice Justice tied up in the background.
From here, Death proceeds, in a series of beautifully composed panels, to ride to an industrialized town (wearing an 18th century coat symbolic of the Enlightenment and broad-brimmed hat favored by radicals of the time) and seduce the mob and ultimately incite them to revolutionary violence. In the last panel, Death is fully revealed in his skeletal nature save for a victor’s wreath, triumphantly astride a horse that steps among the corpses — ‘all as brothers, free and equal.’ Death is again the equalizer, but using revolution to do his bidding. With its balanced diagonals, historic details and sharp satire, Rethel’s Dance of Death harks back to Holbein’s aesthetic and message but for entirely different political ends. Although Rethel chose to call it a Dance of Death, the differences in social class are not equalized but championed in the depiction of the perils of revolution.
In contrast, Thomas Rowlandson’s The English Dance of Death (1815) gives the comedic and social satire possibilities of the motif full rein. Nagging wives, leering husbands, fetching chambermaids, obese drunkards in wheelbarrows are all rendered in grotesque parodies of human folly. A pitiless and delighted Death chases, drags or leads the characters to their inevitable fate. As with Holbein, all social stations are represented, although not in the traditional order, and Rowlandson melds the motif with portions of its obvious cousin, the seven deadly sins. The gluttonous, the vain and the conniving all make appearances, as do some curious modern equivalents such as the Quack Doctor, the Catchpole (tax collector) and Genealogist. Only a few appear noble, such as the Recruit, which only serves to show death at its cruellest. In both style and content, it seems that Rowlandson’s Dance of Death is the clearest expression of the motif as editorial cartoon.
Despite adopting the title and exploring the social foibles and hypocrisy of Holbein’s template, Rowlandson was not slavish in his interpretation. This is true of many modern riffs on the motif. Today, the Dance of Death’s most enduring feature, that of the personification of Death, is unleashed in all sorts of forms and permutations, though some themes recur. For instance, many of the images in the war-related artwork of the Richard Harris Collection, including works by Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, Otto Dix and John Heartfield, draw on the Dance of Death theme, with antecedents in post-Holbein images of Death taking the soldier as well as Rethel’s repurposing. It is, of course, inevitable that the figure of Death and war are linked and, interesting that this is more often in the form of a print rather than an original painting – so much the better for wide distribution.
Perhaps the most curious and inscrutable of the Dance of Death’s permutations is that of the Death and the Maiden. First appearing in Germany in the early 1500s, the motif is typified by a skeletal figure embracing a naked woman in the bloom of her youth. Erotically charged and tinged with the taboo, it reads like a censored panel of the Dance of Death. It has inspired generations of artists, from Edvard Munch to Joseph Beuys. One modern depiction, attributed to the prolific poster designer Josef Fenneker in 1919 used the image to promote a film written by Fritz Lang that purports to be about a beautiful dancer exploited by a cripple to lure men to their deaths. Like the original mural at the Cimetière des Innocents, the film, entitled Der Totentanz ((Dance of Death), is lost to time.
In contemplating the original mural and all the subsequent Dance of Deaths, one wonders if they had the intended effect of inspiring a more virtuous populace. One can imagine how the less fortunate classes may have taken pleasure in seeing their oppressors and those lucky enough to be born into wealth brought low by the great equalizer. Perhaps the effect was less like a photograph that might inspire empathy and more like the editorial cartoon, that tireless tormentor of the corrupt blowhard. It is not hard to imagine a bit of comfort being derived by applying this motif to the least humble and most privileged in today’s society. I suspect such an image would go viral much faster than something closer to the cautionary intent of the original Dance of Death. For instance, a conscience-prodding image that shows shoppers being chased by Death through a climate-changed landscape may have more power than an image seeking to elicit sympathy by depicting a migrant welcoming Death in the desert. For whatever ends, and whichever side of human nature it appeals to, the adaptability of the Dance of Death comes from a universality that extends beyond content to form. In fact the single image with a single caption, a form once seen in the mural of a Parisian cemetery, is referred to by contemporary cartoonists as a ‘gag’ comic. The term not only conjures up the involuntary laugh but also the deathly grip. The mirthful grinning skull is the dark punchline, reminding us that the joke is on us. All of us.
This essay appears, with many other essays and hundreds of images in Death: A Graveside Companion edited by Joanna Ebenstein, a must have for anyone interested in this subject.