Holbein, Spurious editions (1530-1654)

We have previously looked at the so-called proofs and the proper publications of Holbein's woodcuts.

On this page we will look at three editions that, despite much publicity, do not seem to exist.

Quotations, German verses and a Flemish edition, ca. 1530

Now I am a bishop […]

This story seems to start with Papillon. He makes his reservations: The first edition "as far as can be judged ought to be from 1530, printed at Basel or Zurich, with headings over each woodcut, and, I believe, verses below — all in German". Papillon also says that one of the first editions has been in Flemish.(1)

But Papillon was quoted by other experts and they dropped all reservations. 22 years later, von Murr wrote in his Kunstgeschichte:

The first edition of these figures from the Dance of Death was issued in Basel in 1530 in the octavo format. Above each woodcut there are German sayings from the Bible, and below you can read German rhymes.(2)

But the reason I quote von Murr (and indeed the reason I even made this page) is that Von Murr on page 13 quotes a single verse with a German text, namely the abbot:

Von Murr does not say where he has found this verse. He goes through the 53 scenes in one of the printed editions along with Christian von Mechel's copper plates that had been published eight years earlier. The long list is interrupted without further explanation by the above verse.

Bible from 1538 with The Creation

There is no need to spend more time on this. Papillon says he thinks there are verses underneath, »& je crois des Vers sous chacune«. So he hasn't seen them himself, and to this day there is still no one who has heard of anyone who has seen them. 50 years after Papillon, in 1816, Ottley tried to penetrate the fog, but he was misunderstood by German researchers and taken as further evidence that the British Museum owned such a publication.

Papillon said there were titles above each image (»un titre à chaque Estampe«), while von Murr changed this to Bible quotations (»Sprüche auß der Bibel«). Papillon were probably thinking of the so-called proofs with their German headings, while von Murr was thinking of the later publications in Lyon with French, Latin and Italian (but never German) poems.

And how did Papillon come up with the year 1530? This was explained 2 pages earlier: "The blocks must have been engraved around 1530 for the four images from The Old Testament can be found as early as in 1539, where it is easy to see that the blocks had already been used for printing many thousands of copies".(4)

The only mystery left is where von Murr found the verse.

Imagines Mortis (1574)

Imagines Mortis, but from 1547.

Douce (page 109) mentions an »Imagines Mortis : item epigrammata è Gall. à G. Æmilio in Latinum versa. Lugdun. Frellonius« from 1574 and gives Peignot as his only source, while Peignot (Recherches historique et littéraires sur les danses des morts, 1826, page 62) says that M. Courtois had such a copy.

The only reference then is a catalog over Edme-Bonaventure Courtois' library from 1819. Douce is probably right when he suggests (footnote 114) that two numbers have been exchanged and that the book in question is one of the three editions from 1547: »This edition is given on the authority of Peignot, p. 62, but has not been seen by the author of this work. In the year 1547, there were three editions, and it is not improbable that, by the transposition of the two last figures, one of these might have been intended«.

De Doodt vermaskert (1654)

De Doodt Vermaskert

De Doodt vermaskert met des werelts ydelheyt afghedaen door G. V. Wolsschaten, Verciert met de constighe belden van den vermaerden schilder Hans Holbeen, Antwerp, 1654.

A Dutch language book with 15 good copies of Holbein's original woodcuts. Some experts consider them to be genuine, but I don't believe that (any longer).

Other interpreters of Holbein's dance of death

The so-called proofs had German titles.

The publications in Lyon had Bible-quotations above and poems below.

Footnotes: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Dances of death Holbein's dance of death Holbein's original woodcuts