Hans Holbein's dance of death alphabet, Christoph Froschauer (1490-1564)

Christopher Froschover, of Zurich, used two alphabets with the Dance of Death. In Gesner's "Bibliotheca Universalis," printed by him in 1545, folio, he used the letters A. B. C. in indifferent copies of the originals with some variation. In a Vulgate Bible, printed by him in 1544, he uses the A and C of the same alphabet, and also the following letters, with different subjects, viz. F. Death blowing a trumpet in his left hand, with the right seizes a friar holding his beads and endeavouring to escape. O. Death and the Swiss soldier with his battle-axe; and, S. a queen between two Deaths, one of whom leads her, the other holds up her train. The Gesner has also a Q from the same alphabet of Death and the nun. This second alphabet is coarsely engraved on wood, and both are of the same size as the originals.
(Francis Douce, 1833, The Dance of Death, p. 217)

I was a bit undecided as to whether to quote Douce, for his description is incomplete and partly misleading. On the Swiss site, www.e-rara.ch, 1,000 books published by Froschauer are digitized, so let us see if this makes a more structured overview possible.

In March 1527 Christoph Froschauer published the book: »Farrago annotationum in Genesim«. It contained a copy of Holbein's P. At first sight it can be hard to tell that it's a copy, because in the real world, Holbein's original initials were often printed badly, and it's no easy task to determine whether a woodcut is worn and poorly printed, or a copy.

Let us compare. To the left is a perfect print (a so-called "printer's proof"). Then comes an example of how Holbein's genuine letters could look when used (in this case it is »Polydori Vergilii Urbinatis« from 1532), and finally Froschauer's copy:

As one can see, it's only small differences that separate them. In particular, Holbein's soldier has a square jaw, while Froschauer's warrior has a round face. And in Froschauer's copy there's a distance between the weapons and the top frame.

The same year, 1527, Froschauer published »Ain christliche Underwisung der Jugend jm Glouben«, which contained a copy of Holbein's D. Let's compare again:

Again the differences are small, like the bone on the ground at the bottom left that is lacking in Froschauer's copy.

These two letters were used a number of times in various books published by Froschauer, but after 1531 they fell out of use. Between 1531 and 1544 they were only used in one single book.(1)

In 1535 came instead two new characters: In the book »Adversus omnia catabaptistarum« was an A (picture to the left), which has clearly been inspired by Holbein's A, and in »acta apostolorum Heinrychi Bullingeri« was a C, which was almost an inversed copy of Holbein's C.

Then in 1544 came the Bible that Douce described: »Biblia sacrosancta Testamenti«. The A and C were used, and as Douce writes, there were new letters: F, O, Q and S. Douce calls them coarse and he may be right in this, but they are not without their charm. What Douce doesn't tell is that the old D and P also had been taken into favor again and were used once each. Maybe Douce hadn't noticed that they were copies?

A letter that was conspicuous by its absence in 1544, is the B. The printer instead used a Beta from a series about Jesus' life with Greek initials. The B, which is a copy of Holbein's B, wasn't used before in the other book mentioned by Douce, viz. »Bibliotheca Universalis« from 1545. On the other hand, this book uses other initials (i.e. without dances of death) for D, F, P and S.

In the following years, the letters D and P were again used by Froschauer, and the different dance of death initials are all used in the English Bibles that he printed for Myles Coverdale (picture to the left).