Groulleau, La Grand' Danse Macabre
La Grand' Danse Macabre, 1550.
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Etienne Groulleau was accepted as a bookseller and printer in Paris in 1547
and probably died in 1563.
The book on the right is from 1550.
Groulleau published at least one more edition, but without a date.
The beginning of the men's dance
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The book contains the collection of texts that we also find in
Troyes,
Lyon and
Rouen.
First comes the men's dance, and oddly enough, the authority's introduction is omitted.
This omission is inexplicable, since there is in fact
a pictue of the authority,
which Groulleau has used, among other things, in the register just before.
The dance therefore starts with the four dead musicians.
As the picture on the left shows, most of the images are quite small, and they are repeated often.
Incidentally, these are the same ones that were used for
Lexclamation des os sainct Innocent.
There are 23 different images of Death for the men's dance,
and in about half of them there is a "text scroll" on the left
with the words "amort amort"
(example).
The meaning of this is a little unclear, but the section with the "danse aux aveugles" starts with an 8-line ballad, where the first line is:
»Á mort, á mort, á mort tout homme«.
The pictures of the individual people have a "scroll" on the left with their title.
This is usually written in "curly gothic" letters
(example: knight),
but also often with Latin letters
(example: canon).
In a few cases this scroll is blank. This applies, among others, to the archbishop and bishop,
where one might have suspected the publisher of cheating by using the same woodcut for both dancers, but in fact there are two different woodcuts for
archbishop and
bishop.
The dead queen (and king)
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The widow (and also the bigoted woman)
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There is of course a bit of recycling.
The image of the doctor is the same as
the astrologer;
the image of the hermit (in several sections of the book) is the same as
the Carthusian monk;
the bigot woman is the same as
the widow;
and the female fool is the same as
the male.
The dead king and the dead queen are, as always, the same woodcut, but somewhat surprisingly, the text,
"la royne mort",
shows that it is the king who is a repetition of the queen, and not vice versa.
Although the book is printed in Paris, the order is — somewhat surprisingly —
the same as in Troyes.
This means, firstly, that there is no third verse
to the usurer's customer
or for the hermit, but this may of course be due to the small format of the book.
Secondly, the halberdier and fool come
before the clerc and hermit, but this may be because this order is more logical,
since the hermit finishes the dance.
Thirdly, the dance is interrupted at the very end — just before the dead king and the authority —
by a dead man blowing a horn, and a "rondeau" that begins:
»Tous & toutes morir il nous conuient«.
But the fouth and most inexplicable thing is that
the shepherdess and the woman with crutches swap places with
the prioress and the young woman.
In Troyes this happened because the image of the
abbess and the noblewoman had been lost. Therefore, these two women were illustrated by
reusing the image of the prioress and the young woman,
and in order not to use the same woodcut on two consecutive pages, the order was reversed.
In contrast, it is difficult to see why this would have happened in Paris,
where Groulleau has woodcuts of
abbess and
noblewoman as well as
priores and
young woman.
The text, however, does not seem to be influenced by Troyes.
Here it can be mentioned that the cardinal and the king have 8 lines each, as they should (in Troyes they only have 7 each),
and that
the halberdier
is called »Le Hallebardier«
and not »L'Aduanturier«.
For further details, refer to the texts from
the men's dance and
the women's dance.
Accidens / Aveugles
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The 15 signs
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In the other sections of the book there is a surprise:
The original woodcuts/metalcuts published by Simon Vostre in the 1510s.
The images are accompanied by the texts from Les Accidens de l'Homme
and La Dance aux Aveugles / The dance of the blind.
Some of the scenes are missing. This applies to the two that are not in Aveugles, viz.
Lèse-majesté and
Child,
and also the
table.
The second to last scene,
Judgment Day,
is saved until a bit later, namely at the end of the section on
The 15 signs before Judgment Day.
The men and women are shown in the order they appear in the book:
Estienne Groulleau
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Estienne Groulleau
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Estienne Groulleau
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Estienne Groulleau
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Death with coffin
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Resources
Further information
Dances of death
Danse macabre
Groulleau
