The scenes from The Old Testament are not included in the Holbein's dance of death alphabet,
but back in 1524 Holbein had designed an alphabet with themes from The Old Testament cut in metal (picture to the right).
Bible from 1538 with The Creation by Holbein
1547: Bible-illustrations with The Creation.
olbein also produced a series of illustrations for The Old Testament.
When publishing Bibles and Bible picture books, these illustrations were often
complemented with the first four pictures from the dance of death:
Creation, Temptation and Fall,
The Expulsion from Paradise and Life After the Fall.
The picture to the left is from a Bible published by the Trechsel brothers in 1538 — i.e. same publisher and same
year as the first publication of Holbein's dance of death.
The picture to the right is from a picture book from 1547 with Holbein's illustrations from The Old Testament — spiffed up with
sundry Bible quotes and didactic poems.
Crack in the early editions.
The first editions showed a vertical crack in the middle that went right through God's face (picture to the right).
This was fixed in later editions.
Variations: Aldegrever makes a free interpretation as usual.
On the other hand, he's got a picture in his mini-series about Adam and Eva, that looks much like Holbein's.
Eberhard Kieser copies Aldegrever.
Birckmann makes a free interpretation, and Valvasor copies Birckmann.
Deuchar and Bewick from Protestant Britain didn't like the picture of God as a bishop and have their own versions without God. Anderson's publisher in U.S.A. deliberately skipped this picture.
olbein lets his dance start with Creation, Temptation and Fall
and The Expulsion from Paradise — just as he ends it with The Last Judgment.
Dances of death
Holbein