The Dance of Death
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I have always wondered what this charming Christmas-city, with its great beer and sweet marzipan, had done to deserve such a disparaging sobriquet. While researching for a Danish site about tarot I found the answer:
"Death from Lübeck" was a dance of death — a 30 meter long painting, showing Death in a long chain-dance with 24 humans - painted life-size - from all classes of society, from pope to infant. Death skips around in the procession, calling people to the dance, but most of the dancers-to-be try to decline.
The painting was destroyed during the 2nd world war but it was only a copy anyway, since the original medieval painting had been replaced by a new one with a new text in 1701. On the other hand there's still a fragment (yes, 7½ meters is a fragment) of a very similar painting in Tallinn, which can still be visited, and where one can read parts of the original medieval text.
The dance of death was a popular and wide-spread theme in the late Middle Ages. On these pages there are samples all the way from metropols like Berlin, London, Paris and Basel to Malmö and Nørre Alslev. All over Europe on churches and monasteries one could see the long chain dances with Death dancing away with citizens from all walks of society.
The subject is colossal. On this website there are almost 1,500 pages and about 5,500 images in the gallery. The easiest way to get started is to jump right into the dance by clicking on the images below:
I would like to thank Mischa von Perger for correcting errors without number.
What is a dance of death?
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Trying to define a genre can easily become incredibly boring. So don't be afraid to stop reading and jump into the dance by clicking on the many links.
The avid reader will also quickly discover that virtually all dances presented on this website deviate from our definition in several ways.
But to the point: The Dances of Death originated as murals in the late Middle Ages / early Renaissance. The oldest precisely dated dance is la Danse Macabre in Paris from 1424. The dance in Basel was from ca. 1440, but its roots are presumably a bit older, for we can trace the many stages in the development of The High German 4-lined Dance of Death. The painting in Lübeck was from 1463.
In the dances of death, Death or Death's helpers drags the entire society away — from the mighty pope and emperor to the beggar and the newborn baby. In Lübeck, it was one long chain dance; in Basel, Death and his victims danced away in pairs; in Paris, it appears that each pair was separated by columns in an archway.
It is this mirror of society that is fundamental. A single picture of Death and the young man or Death and the maiden is not in itself a dance of death. The paintings were monumental. The dance in Lübeck was 30 meters, the dance in Basel was 60, while the dance in Bern approached 80 meters (though with gaps between each scene).
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During the same period, the art of printing was developing rapidly. Of course, books could not show long chain dances, so instead they had to present a single couple on each page (example on the left).
The earliest books were block books, where both the picture and the text were cut from the same wooden block, but Gutenberg soon introduced movable type, and the book market exploded. In Lübeck, the painting was loosely rewritten under the title Des dodes dantz (1489 and 1496) and Dodendantz (1520). The same woodcuts ended up in Denmark and were used for Copenhagen's dance of death (ca. 1550). The latter is getting a re-premiere on these pages — newly restored for the first time in years.
In Paris, la Danse Macabre was printed in 1485 and apparently the timing — 61 years after the painting was created — was perfect, for countless other publishers published versions of the same Parisian text, not only in Paris but also in Troyes, Rouen, Genève and Lyon. Soon after, the dancing dead began to fill the margins of French prayer books.
Around Heidelberg, Der Doten Dantz mit figuren was printed around 1488 with a second edition around 1492 and a third edition around 1520.
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The text is just as important as the image. There are dances of death without text (e.g. in Dresden and Holbein's dance of death), and there are purely literary dances of death without pictures, but basically the dance of death consists of both elements. Images and text are combined, so that it has in effect been the world's first and greatest comics.
The dances were often introduced by a preacher, who also often had the final word. The dance itself, however, consisted of dialogues between Death and the individual victim. This is where the dance of death has its strength, when we get a tour through the entire medieval society, where every contemporary reader was able to reflect himself.
At that time, priests still preached in Latin, but in the dance of death, the congregations could read how Death and his victims spoke to each other in the local language: Low German, Swabian, Alemannic, Alsatian, Picard, English, Danish, etc.
As a rule, Death started by inviting the victim to the dance in a rhymed verse, while the victim used his verse to protest. In Lübeck and Tallinn, a more advanced variant was used, where the victim began his complaint with 8 lines, and Death's reply was 7 lines; the 8th line was then addressed to the next dancer, so that the individual verses in the text were linked together like the participants in the painting. For example, Death's reply to the empress ended with: "Follow me, Mr. Cardinal!".
The texts in particular have a surprising amount of social indignation, social criticism, and satire:
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- The pope receives the "honor" of leading the dance as the world's most powerful man, a "God on earth". The reality at the time was that the Pope had to fight against antipopes and the Reformation.
- The cardinal has made a good profit selling indulgences, but now he fears ending up in purgatory himself.
- The abbot has eaten himself fat instead of salting his body; Death dryly remarks that "the fattest will rot soonest".
- The abbess screams and protests as Death drags her away from this world, which she had sworn to renounce. In Basel, Death mocks the abbess for being slightly pregnant.
- The nun prays devoutly to Jesus in her cell, while her lover sits in her bed.
- The emperor and other nobles in their fancy clothes must put up with a naked corpse commanding them around.
- The physician with his urine glass has made a living inspecting the urine of his sick patients, but now he can't even cure himself. Against the power of death, there is no remedy in the garden.
- The judge will now have to go before the highest court himself.
- The lawyer must now plead his own case.
- The astrologer could not foresee his own fate.
- Violent crusaders, knight, noblemen, landsknechts, executioners and robbers — for ordinary people it has been all the same — now finally meet an opponent who is not afraid of them.
- The godless usurer is blinded by gold.
- The merchant has only thought about profit
- The dishonest landlord has diluted the wine with water. A trick, says Death, the innkeeper has learned from Jesus. There are also dishonest innkeepers in Berlin and Der Doten Dantz mit figuren. There are some sins that even Death cannot atone for.
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The depiction of women is more two-dimensional. They are criticized for "female sins": vanity and love of finery. Death shows them how little their beauty is worth and how quickly it will pass. The young women would rather dance with the young men than think about the salvation of their souls, so now Death tells them that they can dance with him.
The empress in Copenhagen's dance of death is one of the few who reflects on the fact that she will no longer see her children: »Might I see my children's honour and glory / then I would be much happier«.
Only towards the end of the dance, when we approach the weakest in society, does Death show some leniency. He asks the peasant to stop his hard work (but the farmer suddenly no longer thinks the work is so hard). The blind man and the cripple are actually happy to see Death, and the same goes for the hermit: »Come now, desired Death, you do not frighten me«.
At the very end of the dance comes the weakest being: the newborn child. In the French dances the child paradoxically says that it cannot speak: A a a / a worde I can not speke, while the child in Basel (and perhaps in Lübeck) wonders how it will be able to dance when it has not yet learned to walk. The only consolation Death can offer is that the child has not yet sinned, except for the Original Sin.
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In 1538, Hans Holbein's famous woodcuts were published, and after 100 years of chain dances, the genre was redefined. As we have seen, the chain dance was already divided into individual scenes in the books, but all the participants still had the same background, so one had to assume that they were dying at the same time and from the same cause (e.g. from The Black Death).
Holbein went even further and produced a series of independent scenes that showed how Death threatens everywhere: home in the bed, on the highway, at sea, in the forest, on the battlefield, at the king's castle, etc. Holbein's inspiration was some French books from the 15th century.
The difference can be seen for example between the usurer in Basel, who is sitting out in the open field together with the other dancers, and Holbein's usurer, who is hiding in this cellar behind double iron lattices. Or the emperor in Des dodes dantz, who stands up against the same wall and hilly landscape as everybody else, and Holbein's emperor, who's sitting on his throne surrounded by courtiers.
There is no dialogue to accompany Holbein's woodcuts, only some semi-relevant allusions to the Bible, so the format is more like an emblem book. In fact, one might be tempted to ask whether we can even speak of a dance of death.
But the answer is yes. Holbein's dance of death is very much a dance of death: Holbein shows the whole of society from the pope (on the left) and the emperor down to the peasant and the child (on the right) in a sequence that, especially at the beginning, alternates between clerical and secular representatives. Death plays a musical instrument much more often than is the case in the old paintings.
And although there is no dialogue, Holbein has plenty of satire and social criticism: The dance itself starts with the Pope letting an emperor kiss his feet — an act that Martin Luther had already in 1520 described as anti-Christian. It doesn't make matters any better that the Pope's throne is surrounded by corpses and devils. The dance ends with the child: Even though the family is very poor and they barely have a roof over their heads, they are still shocked to lose their little brother. It is no consolation for them that they have one less mouth to feed .
