Holbein is known chiefly by his portraits. He painted some historical and sacred pictures; but though they all bear witness to his genius, it can hardly be denied that they also show that that genius was not suited to such works. Holbein had an objective perception;that is, his mind received impressions entirely uninfluenced by its own character or condition; and his pictures, therefore, seem like literal transcripts of what was before his eyes. He nowhere shows that he had an idea of abstract beauty, or the power of generalizing from individuals, or that he was at all discontented with the subjects which he painted; so that his works leave an impression of absolute faithfulness. But to suppose, therefore, that his portraits have merely the merit of reproducing the external facts of Nature, like photographs, would do him wrong; for he was faithful to expression as well as form, and has perpetuated upon his canvas the voluptuous sweetness of Anne Boleyn, the courtliness and manly grace of Wyatt, and the severity, the energy, and the penetrating judgment of Sir Thomas More. His portrait of the last is one of the greatest portraits ever painted. Some competent critics consider it the greatest. It is so real, so human, that we might be well content, if one in twenty of the actual men we meet were half as real and human; and it expresses, with equal strength and subtilty, the large and noble nature of the man. Holbein was a great colorist, and imitated all the rich and tender hues of Nature, in their delicate and almost imperceptible gradations, with a minute truthfulness which is quite marvellous.
This being the character of his mind, it would hardly be supposed that he could produce such a work as the great Dance of Death, which has caused all others to be forgotten, except by antiquarians. For this Dance is the most remarkable embodiment in Art of that fantastic and grotesque idealism which has found its best expression in the works of German poets and painters; and the preëminence of Holbein's over all the other representations of the same subject consists in this,that, while they are but a dull and formal succession of mere costumed figures seized by a corpse and shrinking away from its touch, Holbein's groups are instinct with life, character, and emotion. In particular is this true of the figure of Death, although it is a mere skeleton,the face without a muscle, and for the eye but a rayless cavern. Death is not one whom "a limner would love to paint or a lady to look upon"; but Holbein has given a strange and fascinating interest to the figure, which in all other hands is merely repulsive. The grim monarch sat to a painter who not only added to the truthfulness of his portrait the charm of poetic feeling, but the magic touch of whose pencil made his dry bones live.
The insignificance of the material in which the painter worked, when compared with the effect which he produced, is also remarkable in this unique work of Art. For Holbein's Dance of Death is not, like the others, either a great fresco painting, or a series of sculptures; it is not a painting at all,but merely a series of very small woodcuts, fifty-three in number, forty-six of which were published at Lyons in 1538, and the whole afterwards at Bâle in 1554, under the title, Simulachres de la Mort, Icones Mortis: that is, in French and Latin, "Images of Death,"for the title "Dance of Death" is of recent origin. The leaves on which the cuts are printed make but part of a little book not so large as a child's primer; but a copy of it is now worth ten times its weight in gold. It was copied and republished in numberless editions, as a popular book, merely for the sake of the subject, and the great lesson taught by it,each print being accompanied by an admonitory stanza, and a quotation from the Bible. Beside these editions, endeavors have been made of later years to imitate it satisfactorily as a work of Art,but in vain. Great as we think our advancement in the arts has been,the mechanical part of them, at least,all the efforts of the lithographer, the wood-cutter, and even the line-engraver, to reproduce the spirit or the very lines of this work, have been but partially successful. There is as much difference between the most carefully-executed and costliest copies and good impressions of the original wood-cuts, made three hundred years ago, and sold for a franc or two, as there is between pinchbeck and gold.
Any attempt to reproduce the effect of those groups in words can hardly fail to fall equally short of the mark; but we will tell our readers what they are, and endeavor to give some notion of their purpose and spirit.
The first shows the Creation of Woman;we have seen before why she is made thus prominent in the Dance. The composition is crowded with the denizens of the earth, the air, and the water; the sun, the moon, and the stars all appear; the four winds of heaven issue from the laboring cheeks of figures that impersonate them. The Creator, in the form of an aged man in royal robes, and wearing the imperial crown, lifts Eve bodily from the side of the sleeping Adam.
The second represents the Temptation. Eve reclines upon the ground, and shows Adam the fruit which she has plucked. Adam stands grasping the tree with his left hand, and raises his right to gather for himself. The serpent, who looks down upon Eve, has the face and body of a woman. The forms in this group are fine; Adam's is remarkable for its symmetry and grace; but Eve's face is ignoble. Indeed, Holbein, like Rembrandt, seems to have been incapable of an idea of female beauty.
In the third we see the Expulsion from Paradise; and here the Dance begins. Our guilty parents fly before the flaming sword,poor Eve cowering, and her hair streaming in a wavy flood upon the wind; and before them, but unseen, Death leaps and curvets to the sound of a vielle or rote,an old musical stringed instrument,which he has hung about his neck. His glee, as he leads forth his victims into the valley where his shadow lies, is perceptible in every line of his angular anatomy; his very toes curl up like those of a baby in its merriment.
In the fourth, Adam has begun to till the ground. The pioneer of his race, he is uprooting a huge tree, all unconscious that another figure is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,but Death, who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they looked upon the common ancestors of all men, laboring for the means of life, they asked, in the words of an old distich,
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"
The fifth composition seems to represent a general rejoicing over the Triumph of Death. It shows a churchyard and porch filled with skeletons, who blow trumpets of all sorts and sizes; one beats frantically upon a pair of kettle-drums, and another, wearing a woman's nightcap, with a broad frill border, plays the hurdy-gurdy.
In the sixth, a Pope, the highest earthly potentate, is in the act of crowning an Emperor, who kneels to kiss his toe. But the successor of St. Peter does not see, as he sits upon his throne, giving authority and sanction to the ruler of an empire, that a skeleton leans from behind that throne, and grins in his face, and that another in a cardinal's hat mingles with the throng before him.
The seventh is one of the finest of the series. An Emperor is enthroned, with his courtiers round him. He is threatening one with his sword for some act of injustice from which a poor peasant who kneels before him has suffered. But, unseen by all, a skeleton bestrides the shoulders of the monarch and lays his hand upon his very crown. There can be no doubt that Shakspeare had this subject in his mind when he wrote that fine passage in "King Richard the Second,"
The seventh is one of the finest of the series. An Emperor is enthroned, with his courtiers round him. He is threatening one with his sword for some act of injustice from which a poor peasant who kneels before him has suffered. But, unseen by all, a skeleton bestrides the shoulders of the monarch and lays his hand upon his very crown. There can be no doubt that Shakspeare had this subject in his mind when he wrote that fine passage in "King Richard the Second,"
"Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, andfarewell, King!"
In the eighth we see a King (it is unmistakably Francis I.) dining under a canopy, and served by a splendid retinue. He stretches out his hand to receive a wine-cup; for he does not see that Death is filling it.
A Cardinal appears in the ninth, selling an indulgence for a heavy bribe; and we all rejoice to see that Death has laid hands upon his hat,the symbol of his rank,and is about to tear it from his head.
In the tenth, an Empress, passing through her palace-yard, attended by her ladies, is led by the favorite on whom she leans, and who she does not see is Death, into an open grave.
Death, in the next, has assumed the guise of a Court Fool, and has seized a Queen at the very gate of her palace. She recognizes him, and struggles, shrieking, to free herself from his grasp; but in vain. With a grin of fierce delight, he lifts up his hour-glass before her, and, in spite of her resistance and that of a gentleman who attends her, is about to bear her off. Every line of this composition is instinct with life.
In the twelfth, Death carries off a Bishop from his flock.
In the thirteenth, an Elector of the Empire, surrounded by his retinue, is approached by a poor woman, who begs his aid in behalf of herself and her child; he repulses her scornfully; for he does not see that Death, the avenger of the oppressed poor, and who is here crowned with oak-leaves, has laid his gripe upon him. Holbein has put such an expression of power into the arm and of wrath into the face of this skeleton, that we expect to see his victim haled off into the air before our very eyes.
The Abbot and the Abbess are the subjects of the next two cuts. In the former, Death has assumed the mitre and the crosier of his victim, and drags him off with such an expression of fun and burlesque pomp as we sometimes see in the face of a mischievous boy who mocks his betters. In the companion group his look is that of a demon; and with his head fantastically dressed, he drags the Abbess off by the scapulary which hangs from her neck.
A Nobleman and a Canon are his prey in the sixteenth and seventeenth groups. We lack space to describe any but the most remarkable with particularity.
The satire of the next three is levelled against the Lawyers, who were held in such little respect in Bâle. They show a Judge who takes a bribe from a rich to wrong a poor suitor, and a Counsellor and an Advocate who lend their talents to wealthy clients, but turn their backs upon the poor victims of "the oppressor's wrong." In one, a demon is blowing suggestions into the Counsellor's ear from a pair of bellows, which he has doubtless used elsewhere for other purposes; in all, Death stands ready to avenge the poor.
In the twenty-first, a Preacher addresses a Congregation, whose interested attention the painter has portrayed with great skill, knowledge of character, and consequent variety and truth of expression. Behind the Preacher stands Death, and, with a kind of grotesque practical pun, holds the jaw of a skeleton over his head, as far more eloquent than his own.
A Priest and a Mendicant Friar are the subjects of the twenty-second and twenty-third.
The twenty-fourth is of peculiar interest. In it we see a youthful Nun, who, it is clear, has taken her vows too hastily, kneeling before the oratory in her cell. But her heart is not in her devotions; for the lover whom she abandoned has made his way into the apartment, and sits on her bed singing to his lute. Her hands are clasped, not in prayer, but in an agony of love and apprehension. She turns from the crucifix to gaze at him; and we see how the interview will end: for an aged female attendant, in coif and scapulary, leans over to extinguish the candles. We see, too, what its consequence will be; for that attendant is Death.
Among the remaining subjects, which we cannot examine particularly, or in their order, are those of the Old Man and Old Woman led by Death, each to the sound of a dulcimer;the Physician, to whom in mockery Death himself brings a patient;the Astronomer, to whom the skeleton offers a skull in place of a celestial globe;the Miser, from whom Death snatches his hoarded gold; and the Merchant, whom the same inexorable hand tears away from his ships and his merchandise;the storm-tossed ship, with Death snapping the mast;a Count, dressed in the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;a Peddler;a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their wickedness by Death;a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been tumbled in a ruinous heap by a pair of skeletons;a Blind Beggar, who stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join his pastime.
A few others claim our more particular attention. Among them is a Knight, armed cap-a-pie, who is run through and through, from back to front, by Death, himself half armed in mockery. There is a concentrated vigor in the thrust of the lance, and a cool venom in the countenance of the assailant, that we may seek in vain in the works of famous battle-painters; and it must always be remembered that Holbein's figure is entirely without those indications of muscular movement by which we express our feelings,in fact, a mere bare-boned skeleton.
A Bride at her wedding-toilet, whom Holbein has contrived to make almost beautiful, receives a robe from one attendant; another clasps round her neck a collarof gold and jewels? No,of bones, and with bony fingers. And the next cut to this shows us the Bridegroom and Bride walking through an apartment hung with arras, while before them dances Death, beating a tabor, like a child beside himself with joy.
One of the finest and most touching conceptions in the whole series represents a dilapidated Cottage,a mere shanty, so wretched that the love of those who live in it is all their happiness,nay, all their comfort. The mother is preparing for two little children the simplest and poorest of meals, at a fire made of a few small sticks. She finds consolation in the very pranks that hinder her humble task. Death enters,there is no door to keep him out,and, seizing the hand of the younger child, who turns and stretches out the other imploringly to his mother, carries him off, remorseless and exulting, leaving her frantic with grief. We may look with comparative indifference, and sometimes even with sympathy, upon his other feats,but who is there that does not hate that grinning skeleton?And yet, perhaps, he exults that he has saved one soul, yet pure, from misery and crime.