ABSTRACT
The German Hans Holbein was one of the foremost painters and printmakers of Northern Europe during the Renaissance. 1 Holbein’s extraordinary skill as an artist made him famous across Western Europe and by 1535 he was the court painter to King Henry VIII of England. Earlier in his career, Holbein produced the designs for a series of forty-one woodcuts known as The Dance of Death derived from a late-medieval artistic genre of allegory that emphasizes the universality of death. Holbein’s Dance of Death underscores the fact that no one can escape from death, whatever one’s status in life. In each image the skeletal figure of death seeks out and drags away its unfortunate victims. Whilst some victims (an old man, for instance) appear stoical in the face of death others betray their emotions. The facial expressions of the three unfortunate victims in the woodcuts reproduced below, two members of the Church and a small child, as well as on those of the observers (especially the child’s mother and sibling) convey the terror inspired by death and the sadness of loss.
