History
Visual Arts

Hans Holbein's masterpiece of the macabre, originally published in Lyons in 1538.

The Dance of Death (Danse Macabre)
(Playing in teh background: Camille Saint-Saen's Danse Macabre)

MACABRE, a term applied to a certain type of artistic or literary composition, characterized by a grim and ghastly humour, with an insistence on the details and trappings of death. Such a quality, deliberately adopted, is hardly to be found in ancient Greek and Latin writers, though there are traces of it in Apuleius and the author of the Satyricon. The outstanding instances in English literature are John Webster and Cyril Tourneur, with E. A. Poe and R. L. Stevenson. The word has gained its significance from its use in French, la danse macabre, for that allegorical representation, in painting, sculpture and tapestry, of the ever-present and universal power of death, known in English as the Dance of Death, and in German as Totentanz (or Todtentanz).

The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of pictures, sculptured or painted, in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken corpse wrapped in graveclothes to persons representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. Of the numerous examples painted or sculptured on the walls of cloisters or churchyards through medieval Europe few remain except in woodcuts and engravings. Thus the famous series at Basel, originally at the Klingenthal, a nunnery in Little Basel, dated from the beginning of the I4th century. In the middle of the 15th century this was moved to the churchyard of the Predigerkioster at Basel, and was restored, probably by Hans Kluber, in 1568; the fall of the wall in 1805 reduced it to fragments, and only drawings of it remain.

A Dance of Death in its simplest form still survives in the Marienkirche at Lubeck ma 15th-century painting on the walls of a chapel. Here there are twenty-four figures in couples, between each is a dancing Death linking the groups by outstretched hands, the whole ring being led by a Death playing on a pipe. At Dresden there is a sculptured hf esize series in the old Neustgdter Kirchhoff, removed here from the palace of Duke George in 1701 after a fire. At Rouen in the aitre (atrium) or cloister of St Maclou there also remains a sculptured danse macabre. There was a celebrated fresco of the subject in the cloister of Old St Pauls in London, and another in the now destroyed Hungerford Chapel at Salisbury, of which a single woodcut, Death and the Gallant, alone remains. Of the many engraved reproductions, the most celebrated is the series drawn by Holbein. Here the long ring of connected dancing couples is necessarily abandoned, and the Dance of Death becomes rather a series of imagines mortis.

Origins

Concerning the origin of this allegory in painting and sculpture there has been much dispute. It certainly seems to be as early as the 14th century, and has often been attributed to the overpowering consciousness of the presence of death due to the Black Death of 1347-50 that killed a quarter of Europe's population. The epidemics so frequent and so destructive at that time brought before popular imagination the subject of death and its universal sway.  Sufferers of the plague, war, poverty and genocidal famine danced in desperation in graveyards, surrounded by symbols of death. Dancers represented bishops, kings, and Peasants - showing that all are equal in the end. The theme continued into theater, dance, literature and graphics by showing Death as one of the dancers avenging the sufferering peasants.

The origin of the peculiar form the allegory has taken can also be attributed to the miseries of the Hundred Years War, and has also been attributed to a form of the Morality plays, a dramatic dialogue between Death and his victims in every station of life, ending in a dance off the stage (see Du Cange, Gloss., s.v. Machabaeorum chora). The origin has also been found, somewhat needlessly and remotely, in the dancing skeletons on late Roman sarcophagi and mural paintings at Cumae or Pompeii, and a false connection has been traced with the Triumph of Death, attributed to Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa.

The etymoIogy of the word macabre is itself most obscure. According to Gaston Paris (Romania, xxiv., 131; 1895) it first occurs in the form macabre in Jean le Fvre's Respit de la mort (5376), Je lis de Macabre la danse, and he takes this accented form to be the true one, and traces it in the name of the first painter of the subject. The more usual explanation is based on the Latin name, Machabaeorum chora. The seven tortured brothers, with their mother and Eleazar (2 Macc;vi., vii.) were prominent figures on this hypothesis in the supposed dramatic dialogues. Other connections have been suggested, as for example with St Macarius, or Macaire, the hermit, who, according to Vasari, is to be identified with the figure pointing to the decaying corpses in the Pisan Triumph of Death, or with an Arabic word magbarah, cemetery.

Morality Plays and Dances

The original plays in the form of a poem were a dialogue between Death and representatives of all classes from the Pope down. In these plays Death appeared not as the destroyer, but as the messenger of God summoning men to the world beyond the grave, a conception familiar both to the Holy Bible and to the ancient poets. The dancing movement of the characters was a somewhat later development, as at first Death and his victims moved at a slow and dignified gait. But Death, acting the part of a messenger, naturally took the attitude and movement of the day, namely the fiddlers and other musicians, and the dance of death was the result.

The purpose of these plays was to teach the truth that all men must die and should therefore prepare themselves to appear before their Judge. The scene of the play was usually the cemetery or churchyard, though sometimes it may have been the church itself. The spectacle was opened by a sermon on the certainty of death delivered by a monk. At the close of the sermon there came forth from the charnel-house, usually found in the churchyard, a series of figures decked out in the traditional mask of death, a close-fitting, yellowish linen suit painted so as to resemble a skeleton. One of them addresses the intended victim, who is invited to accompany him beyond the grave. The first victim was usually the pope or the emperor. The invitation is not regarded with favour and various reasons are given for declining it, but these are found insufficient and finally death leads away his victim. A second messenger then seizes the hand of a new victim, a prince or a cardinal, who is followed by others representing the various classes of society, the usual number being twenty-four. The play was followed by a second sermon reinforcing the lesson of the representation.

The oldest traces of these plays are found in Germany, but we have the Spanish text for a similar dramatic performance dating back to the year 1360, "La Danza General de la Muerte". We read of similar dramatic representations elsewhere: in Bruges before Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1449; in 1453 at Besançon, and in France in the Cimetière des Innocents near Paris in 1424. That similar spectacles were known in England we infer from John Lydgate's Dance of Death written in the first half of the fifteenth century. In Italy besides the traditional dance of death we find spectacular representations of death as the all-conqueror in the so-called "Trionfo della Morte". The earliest traces of this conception may be found in Dante and Petrarch. In Florence (1559) the "triumph of death" formed a part of the carnival celebration. We may describe it as follows: After dark a huge wagon, draped in black and drawn by oxen, drove through the streets of the city. At the end of the shaft was seen the Angel of Death blowing the trumpet. On the top of the wagon stood a great figure of Death carrying a scythe and surrounded by coffins. Around the wagons were covered graves which opened whenever the procession halted. Men dressed in black garments on which were painted skulls and bones came forth and, seated on the edge of the graves, sang dirges on the shortness of human life. Before and behind the wagon appeared men in black and white bearing torches and death masks, followed by banners displaying skulls and bones and skeletons riding on scrawny nags. While they marched the entire company sang the Miserere with trembling voices.

Specimens of the dramatic dance of death have been preserved in the Altsfeld Passion Plays, in the French morality entitled "Charité", and in the Neumarkt Passion Play which opens with the triumph of Death. Bäumker, in Herder's "Kirchenlexikon", enumerates seven French dances of death dating back to the fifteenth century, three of the sixteenth century, three of the seventeenth century, seven of uncertain date, five in England, and four in Italy. Within the limits of the old German Empire there still exist some thirty painted dances of death scattered throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In many representations underneath the several couples are found a rhymed dialogue between Death and his victims, being the invitation of the former and the reply of his victim.

La Danse de la Mort is re-enacted on All Soul’s Day with people dressed up as the dead. This is also popular in Spain and is called la Dança General de la Muerte. The Castillian dance is a spiral dance, danced in rounds around a totem. The dancers are in constant movement, some fall to the ground, and others convulse into spasms. Death is seen as a skeleton that plays a flute, xylophone, violin, harp, bagpipe or other musical instrument and directs the dance of the skeletons or invites the living to dance. Medieval singers complete the theater. There are more than 50 texts with songs in different languages derived from the dance and other small dances that have similar graphic elements.

Mural Paintings

By the 15th century, pictorial representation with verses illustrating the pictures became common in most of the countries of Europe, on the walls of churchyards, cemeteries, on charnel-houses, in mortuary chapels, and even in churches. The dance, in which Death as a skeleton or a corpse led his victims. One of the most famous is the "Triumph of Death" in the cemetery of Pisa, painted between 1450 and 1500. The earliest known fully articulated example of the Dance of Death was a series of mural paintings (1424–25) in the cloisters of the Cemetière des Innocents (Church of the Holy Innocents), Paris. The paintings were destroyed in 1669. In 1485, Guyot Marchand published a set of 17 woodcuts, with verses appended, based on the Paris murals; the set went through many editions and established its own genre.

A Dance of Death in its simplest form still survives in the Marienkirche at Lubeck as 15th-century painting on the walls of a chapel. Here there are twenty-four figures in couples, between each is a dancing Death linking the groups by outstretched hands, the whole ring being led by a Death playing on a pipe. At Dresden there is a sculptured lifesize series in the old Neustädter Kirchhoff, removed here from the palace of Duke George in 1701 after a fire. At Rouen in the aitre (atrium) or cloister of St Maclou there also remains a sculptured danse macabre. There was a celebrated fresco of the subject in the cloister of Old St Pauls in London, and another in the now destroyed Hungerford Chapel at Salisbury, of which a single woodcut, Death and the Gallant, alone remains. Of the many engraved reproductions, the most celebrated is the series drawn Hans by Holbein the younger. Here the long ring of connected dancing couples is necessarily abandoned, and the Dance of Death becomes rather a series of imagines mortis. Goethe wrote a ballad on the theme, Der Todtentanz, and in music Saint-Saëns used it in Danse macabre.

Book Engravings

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. It appears to be clear from the researches of Wornum and Woltmann, of Paul Mantz, of W. J. Linton, the Rev. G. Davies, C. Dodgson, and others, that the drawings were undoubtedly the work of Hans Holbein the younger, who was resident in Basle up to the autumn of 1526, before which time the drawings must have been produced. They were distinctly in his manner and of extraordinarily high merit. There is no evidence that Holbein ever cut a block himself, and when these were issued it was expressly stated that the artist or engraver, who is now generally accepted as Hans Lütszelberger, one of the greatest of German engravers, was dead. But little is known of his career. He was certainly dead before 1526. 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.

The Dance of Death in Istria - under construction

See

  • Peignot, Recherches sur les danses des marts (1826);
  • Douce, Dissertation on the Dance of Death (1833);
  • Massmann, Litteratur der Totentanze (1840);
  • J. Charlier de Gerson, La Danse macabre des Stes Innocents de Paris (1874);
  • Seelmann, Die Totentanze des;

Sources:

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Created: Monday, September 26, 2005; Updated: Sunday, January 04, 2009  
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