Salomon van Rusting
Frontispiece
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The old man (detail)
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ot much is known about Salomon van Rusting, except that he had used to be an army surgeon.
He published »Het schouw-toneel des doods« (Death's theater stage)
in 1707 in Amsterdam. The frontispiece (to the left) shows Death sitting on a throne:
»De Doot Heerst over de Werelt« (Death rules over the World),
and at the bottom a corpse is lying with the text,
»Ick Rust van myn Arbeydt« (i.e. I am resting from my work).
I wonder if there's a pun between "Rust", "resting" and the author's own name, "Rusting"?
Rusting was evidently interested in religion and a great
part of the book and the 30 copperplates
deal with Death throughout the Bible:
Cadavers with long hair resembling feathers are jumping around the Tree of Wisdom,
accompanying Noah's Ark with trumpets, dancing around Lot's wife in front of Sodom and Gomorrah,
attacking Pharaoh and his soldiers in the Red Sea and so on.
By thus placing the dance of death in a Biblical context, Rusting
has anticipated Tobias Weis'
»Sceptra Mortis, ein Biblischer Todtentanz« by almost two centuries.
Towards the end of the book the author arrives at his own time, and the proper dance of death starts.
Many of the motifs are his own invention:
The Skaters, the Miller, the Masquerade, the Tightrope-walker, but some of them
are copied after Holbein.
Lot's daughter, 1707
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Lot's daughter, 1726
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The last of the 30 engravings
shows how Death comes after the author: "Een doctoraal poet".
It is stated in several places, including
the title page,
that the author, Salomon van Rusting, was a physician: "Med. Doct".
The heading says: »De doot nu prest d'Auteur op't lest«
("Death finally presses the author").
The book was republished in
1726, 1735 and 1741; and in 1801, the 1741-edition was re-printed
by Fock in Amsterdam.
A curious detail is that one of Lot's daughters was topless in the 1707-edition (to the left),
but more decently attired in the later editions.
Schau-Platz des Todes
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Schau-Platz des Todes, author
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In 1736 came a German edition in Nürnberg, »Schau-Platz des Todes, oder Todten-Tanz«.
The thirty images are copies of Rusting's copperplates, but it is not known who executed them.
The parish priest Johann Georg Meintel translated Rusting's Alexandrine verses
and augmented them with verbose footnotes.
Meintel also wrote a long introduction with a historical walk-through of dances of death.
This version also ends with Death dragging the author away (picture to the right):
»Den autor hetzt der tod zuletzt«.
("Death finally pursues the author").
Resources
Frontispiece
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Doctor and poet
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Doctor and poet
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Other interpreters of Holbein's dance of death
Dances of death
Holbein's dance of death
Rusting
