Eberhard Kieser, 1617
One of the three additions: The Jew.
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Frontispiece of the 1617 edition.
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berhard Kieser (1583 - 1631)
was from Kastellaun in Hunsrück, but he is known to have resided in Frankfurt between 1609 and 1630,
where he had citizen's rights on the condition that he didn't practise his craft as a goldsmith.
Instead he published several books — among these a dance of death:
»Todten Dantz Durch alle Stände und Geschlecht der Menschen. etc.«.
The first edition was around 1617/18, but
the exact year and number of editions are hard to tell, since the publications are without a year.
The frontispiece (pictured right)
was a copy of a similar broadsheet published in Frankfurt at about the same time
called
»Speculum Humanae Vitae«, printed by Sara Mangin.
Ultimately the design goes back to a
Memento Mori by Fortuna and Andreana.
The fact that Kieser has put "etc." in the title shows that it was already well-known, and it is in fact
the same as the German language editions of
the Holbein-copies, which Birckmann's heirs had published in Cologne,
and which had texts by Caspar Scheydt.
Kieser also took the rest of the texts from Birckmann's books.
First comes an 8-lined poem comparing the pomp of mortal humans with the feathers of a peacock:
»Gleich wie der Pfaw«.
Incidentally, the same poem was included in Merian's books from 1649 and onwards.
Birckmann's publications started with a greeting to the Christian reader:
»Dem Christlichem Leser wünschet Caspar Scheyt / ein embsige Betrachtung«,
which served as introduction to a 94-line poem.
Kieser removed the greetings from Scheydt, and rewrote the poen so it grew to 166 lines.
After the dance of death, Birckmann had another poem by Scheydt, »Beschluß«.
Kieser copied this poem verbatim, but extended it from 1½ pages to 5½.
The bishop and six others were copied after Aldegrever.
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The abbot (and most others) are close copies after Holbein.
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he dance of death consists of 60 plates. These images are numbered and furnished with flowery frames.
The series includes 57 of the 58 scenes in Holbein's dance of death
(the one lacking is these children).
Above each image is a Bible quote in German, and below is a 6-line poem by Caspar Scheydt.
In contrast to the texts, the images are not copied from Birckmann's book.
Most of them are close copies
of Holbein's original woodcuts,
but Kieser has also had access to the 8 pictures in Aldegrever's dance of death,
and in 7 cases he has preferred Aldegrever to Holbein.
The 8th picture,
the abbot, along with most of the rest,
are pretty close copies of Holbein.
Three of the pictures are Kieser's own invention:
The Jew
(image top, left) and
the Jewess
seem to be variations of
Holbein's rich man / miser.
Death appears to instruct the devil in how to strangle the Jewess.
The third new scene is
the mouse tower — a terrible story about an evil archbishop who was eaten alive by mice, which has nothing to do with the dances of death,
and to which we will return immediately.
The 1623-edition, Icones Mortis
The Jew is one of the three additions to Holbein's dance.
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n 1623 the dance was reissued under the name
»Icones Mortis Aliquot Imaginibus«.
In fact the book was now trilingual and had three titles. The French title was:
»Les Images De La Mort […]« like
the Lyon-editions of the genuine Holbein woodcuts
and it still bore the German title:
»Der Todtendantz/ Durch alle Stände und Geschlecht der Menschen […]«.
In the earlier edition the verso-pages had been blank, but now they were used for French and Latin Bible quotes
and quatrains, The quatrains are in fact those written by
Gilles Corrozet in 1538 and translated into Latin by Georg Aemilius in 1542 for the original Holbein woodcuts in Lyon.
For this edition it is easy to see the year.
If you follow the external link to the Herzog August Bibliothek, you will see that a former owner has used a pen to change
"1623" to "1638", but the year can also be seen in three so-called chronograms.
The first is
»VIDete opera DeI:q VIa sVsCeptor noster
DeVs est. psal. 46«. If you add the Roman numerals: the three D's ( = 1.500), the C (100),
the four V's (20) and the three I's, you get 1623.
At the end there are two more chronograms:
»Caro sVnt, spIrIrVs, VaDens & haVD reDIens 500 +1
Psalm. 78.«
and
»SIe WerDen aLLe Vnter DIe ErDen hIn Vnter
fahren, Psalm. 64«.
The 1648-edition: Sexaginta / Sechtzig Figuren
Frontispiece, 1648
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hen Kieser died in 1631, the copperplates ended up in Nürnberg,
The last edition from 1648 was called
»Icones Mortis Sexaginta Imaginibus« and
the German sub-title was:
»Vorbildungen deß
Todtes / In Sechtzig Figuren durch
alle Stände und Geschlechte / derselbigen nichtige
Sterblichkeit
fürzuweisen / außgedruckt / und mit
so viel überschrifften / auch Lateinischen
und neuen Teutschen Verßlein
erkläret«.
It is a little paradoxical that the title says "Sexaginta / Sechtzig Figuren", now when there are no longer only sixty plates.
The publisher, Paulus Fürst (1608-1666), had added a frontispiece,
TodenTantz, which was a round-dance (picture to the right) — a motive he had used in various broadsheets.
He also added
scales,
Sexaginta and
ossuary,
for a total of 64.
The chronograms were updated:
two Bible quotes in Latin and German, where some of the letters are to be read as Roman numerals
(in the German text, W is to be read as two times V, i.e. 10). This is how it looks in the 1648-edition:
| VIta nostra VeLVt herba, qVæ Manè | VI V LV V M | 1071 |  |
| fLoret aC VIres aCCIpIt, VesperI | L CVI CCI I V I | 364 |
| arefaCta reseCatVr, & sVbItò | C C V V I | 210 |
| perIIt psal. 90. | I I | 2 |
| 1648 |
| aLLes fLeIsCh Ist heVV / VnD | LL L I C I VVV D | 767 |
| aLLe seIne herrLIChkeIt Ist | LL I LIC I I | 254 |
| WIe eIn baLD VerWeLktes | W I I LD V W L | 627 |
| Gras. Esa. 40. |
| 1648 |
The ossuary was added in 1648
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Kieser copies Holbein closely. Even the horse apples.
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n this (last) edition, the poems that Kieser had copied from Birckmann/Scheydt have been removed again.
Instead the book starts with a few short texts, which are in both Latin and German.
Then follows three poems, the last of which is titled "Irrgedicht" and starts
»DIese düstre Schatten-Nacht […]«.
These poems are
signed by G.P.H., which stands for Georg Philipp Harsdörffer.
When it comes to the dance of death, Scheydt's German texts remain, since they are engraved in the copper plates
just as the German Bible-quotes are.
On the other hand the French Bible quotes and quatrains have been removed again and replaced by German quotes,
so on the left side of each page-opening are the same Bible verses in Latin, four lines with Gilles Corrozet's verses
that Georg Aemilius had translated into Latin in 1542.
Then the Bible is quoted in German
(i.e. more or less the same quote as the old one engraved at the top of the plate), and there is a newly written German verse of 4
lines.(1)
These are the »Lateinischen und neuen Teutschen Verßlein«
that were advertised on the front page.
The question then is who wrote these new introductory texts and the »neuen Teutschen Verßlein«
for the dance of death:
Johann Vogel, whose name is on the title page? Or Harsdörffer?
Harsdörffer's popularity resulted in the 1648-edition being reprinted in 1998. For unknown reasons,
Holbeins dance of death is once again confused with Basel's dance of death.
This is from the publisher's description of the reprint:
»Die 60 gezählten Kupfer, im wesentlichen unveränderte Sujets des berühmten Baseler Totentanzfreskos Hans Holbeins d.J.,
von dessen Original heute nur noch Spuren erkennbar sind, […]«.
Holbein's dance of death has nothing to do with the dance of death in Basel
— this is a myth, which probably originates from
Georg Scharffenberg.
The Mouse Tower
While the woman looks out of the tower window, Death uses a ladder to climb up.
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Bishop Hatto in the Mouse tower.
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One of the three scenes Kieser himself added was the Mouse Tower (image to the left).
Kieser seems to have combined three motifs.
The first is of course the legend of the Mouse tower (right);
a terrible story about an evil bishop who was eaten alive by mice, which has nothing to do with dances of death.
Of course, the three pictures that Kieser had added had no text by Caspar Scheydt,
so Kieser wrote this verse:
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So wenig als der Meusthurn kundt
Dem Bischoff helffen zu der stundt.
Da ihm die meus mit grosn summen
Im wassr, durch den Rhein nachschwummen.
Biss sie ihn hatten gar gefressen
Also handelstu auch vermessn,
Weil du vermeinst in diesem schlosz
Sicher zu sein vor meim geschosz
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As little as the Mouse-tower could
help the bishop at the hour,
when the mice in great numbers
in the water, through the Rhine, swam after him,
until they had eaten him completely.
In the same way you act presumptuously
because you expect in this castle
to be safe from my bullet.
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The new poem added to the verso-page in the 1648 edition also alludes to the tower and ends:
»So zeiget dir der Meußthurn des Gericht« (This is how the Mouse-tower shows you the judgment.).
Death crawls in through the window.
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In later editions, Death uses a ladder.
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The second theme is Death crawling through the window.
This is an allusion to Jeremiah 9:21.
Jeremiah 9:21: For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets..
The picture on the left is from "Hirnschleiffer" (the "Brain grinder").
The headline: »Der todt steig durchs Fenster ins Haus«
is precisely from Jeremiah 9,21, and the author also quotes this verse when
he compares Death to a thief in the night.
Kieser also quotes Jeremiah 9:21 above the image of the Mouse Tower.
However, the first edition of "The Brain whetter" is from 1618, so it cannot have directly influenced Kieser's book from 1617.
In the later editions, Death uses a ladder.
Adspectus incauti dispendium.
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Attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
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The third and strangest element is that the tower has been given a human face.
Here, the inspiration may have been taken from an emblem book from 1601.
On the left is the emblem "Adspectus incauti dispendium" ("The danger of a careless glance").
The eyes are the gateway to the soul, and a careless glimpse can give Death the opportunity to enter the upper floor.
The man at the front of the house nonchalantly opens the window all the way.
In the background are depicted three women from the Bible who (allegedly) got into trouble because of careless glances:
(A) Eve with the apple, (E) Bathsheba in the bath, and (F) Dinah in Shechem (Genesis 34).
It is of course an open question who has combined these three themes.
The drawing on the right is attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo, and is almost identical to Kieser's.
Arcimboldo was famous for his many paintings of faces consisting of fruits, vegetables, fish, etc.,
so he could easily have made a tower with a face.
But it must be emphasized that the drawing is attributed to Arcimboldo,
and it seems to be impossible to get a good reproduction.
As long as we don't know who made the drawing and when it was made,
and as long as there is no explanatory text, it is difficult to determine who inspired whom.
Resources
TodenTantz
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Scales
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Sexaginta
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Jew
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Jewess
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Tower
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Ossuary
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Kieser, 1617
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Other interpreters of Holbein's dance of death
Many of the texts are copied after the publications by the heirs of Birckmann.
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Other texts are copied after the Lyon-publications with the genuine Holbein.
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Seven images are copied after Aldegrever.
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Footnotes:
(1)
The exemplars residing on The Internet Archive and Gallica share the defect that
between plate XVI and XXIII the left and righthand-pages come in a jumbled sequence:
| Left | Right (Figure) |
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| XVI | XVI |
| XVII | XVIII |
| XIX | XVII |
| XVIII | XX |
| XXI | XIX |
| XX | XXII |
| XXIII | XXI |
| XXIII | XXIII |
So if you are interested in the text, you should read the exemplar on Google Books.
Dances of death
Holbein's dance of death
Eberhard Kieser
