Lübeck's Dance of Death

Robert Geißler

Robert Geißler was the first person to produce a colour reproduction(1) of the painting. In 1868 he published a 5-colour lithography: crimson, blue, yellow, dark brown and white. Nobody would accuse these little pictures (about 12 * 5,5 cm) for being great art - but they may be our best witnesses to the original colours.

The Duke and "his" Death are white since they had been removed from the painting in 1799. This might indicate that Geißler has been careful about rendering the colours authentically.

geissler, part 1geissler, part 2geissler, part 3geissler, part 4geissler, part 5geisler, part 6geissler, part 7Geissler, part 8
Click the little pictures to enlarge.

On the back of the folder one finds the "new" text from 1701 and as much of the medieval text from 1463 as remains.

Resources

Footnotes: (1)

The first . . .: This may not be entirely correct since there's also the water colours by Ludewig Suhl from before 1783. These water colours are rather unknown and I've only seen them mentioned in the Danish magazine Samvirke.

Up to Pictures of Lübeck's Dance of Death

Dansk Select language The dance of death Lübeck Pictures Robert Geißler