Sophie Oosterwijk
The Dance of Death has fascinated people for over six
FIgs. 1 a/b Hans Holbein the Younger, Death
and the Bishop and Death and the Nun,
woodcuts from the Imagines Mortis series
first published in 1538
hundred years. Its combination of morality, social satire
and sheer horror proved irresistible to poets, publishers
and patrons alike. Originally a medieval literary motif,
its appeal spread and endured. Printing ensured a wider
dissemination, while woodcut illustrations provided
models and inspiration for painters and sculptors in the 42
centuries to come. Among the best-known works
are Hans Holbein the Younger’s Imagines Mortis series,
designed around 1523–1525 and published in 1538
(Figs. 1a and 1b), which were in turn reproduced by the
young Peter Paul Rubens some fifty years later.1 Yet
Holbein’s mordant woodcuts were themselves already
a reinter­pretation of the original Dance, with its con-
tinuous chain of dead and living dancers.
In essence, the Dance of Death is one of many late-
medieval moralities about all mankind — old, young, rich
or poor — having to face death eventually. Nobody is
safe. ‘Aussy tot meurt jeune que vielx’, the small Child in
the French poem concludes sadly.2 There were yet older
forms of ‘macabre’ art with moralising lessons about
the brevity of life and the transience of all earthly things.
From the 13th century on we find the tale of ‘The Three
Living and the Three Dead’, in which three young nobles
out hunting are confronted by three animated corpses
who warn them about their own inescapable fate: ‘As we
are now, so will you be’. The tale was depicted in many
murals and illuminated manuscripts across Europe, but
the encounter gradually changed into an aggressive
pursuit of the terrified nobles by the three putrid corpses.3
The inevitability and horror of death, along with the
gruesome decay of the human body, were also visualised
in medieval transi monuments, such as the vermin-
infested effigy on the tomb of François de la Sarra (d. 1363)
in La Sarraz near Lausanne (Fig. 2).4 Some patrons even
commissioned such memorials in their own lifetime,
often with a warning to viewers that they will suffer the
same fate and that the body is merely food for worms,
or just ash, but at the same time expressing faith in the
 FIg. 2 Transi effigy of François de la Sarra
(d. 1363), La Sarraz (near Lausanne)

FIg. 3A
43
Dance of Death mural (two details), c. 1500,
church of Meslay le Grenet (near Chartres)

FIg. 3B
 44

FIg. 4A

Johann Rudolf Feyerabend’s 1806 watercolour

of the Basler Totentanz mural, dating to
the mid-1430s (complete work and two details),
Historisches Museum, Basel

FIg. 4B FIg. 4C
 resurrection. Yet these monuments were reserved for the
elite. In the Dance, participants from all walks of life
must each face their own death, and most characters still
cling to life instead of turning their thoughts to the here-
after. Relatively few women appear, but the 14th-century
Spanish Dança general de la Muerte includes a Jewish
Rabbi and a Moorish Alfaqui (theologian). The Basler
Totentanz likewise features a Jew and a Blind Man, whom
Death deprives of his guide dog, while the vain Noble-
woman beholds Death in her mirror instead of her own
reflection (Fig. 4b). The Dance thus serves as a mirror
for society and as a stark reminder of what is to come:
memento mori — remember that you will die!
The origins of the Dance of Death are obscure. The term
was clearly familiar when the French poet Jean Le Fèvre
stated in his 1376 poem ‘Le Respit de la Mort’ that ‘Je fis
de Macabree la dance’.5 Some read this phrase as an
allusion to the serious illness the poet had just overcome,
but it may instead refer to an earlier poem by Le Fèvre
that is now lost. The Dance could even have begun as an
actual performance: its dialogue format has great dra-
matic potential and records show that it was performed
for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in Bruges in
1449 and for the Provincial Chapter of the Friars Minor
in Besançon in 1453.6 Its adaptability was the key to
the success of the Dance, and it ultimately proved most
successful as a visual cycle — with or without an ac-
companying text — in which the dead dancers frolic
and the living move along reluctantly or, at best, with
45 resignation.
The real catalyst for the spread of the Dance across Europe
was the mural painted on the south wall of the ceme-
tery of the Holy Innocents in Paris in 1424–1425, while the
city was under English control following the 1422 death
of French king Charles VI. This mural comprised a long,
alternating chain of corpses with living protagonists and
incorporated a version of an earlier ‘Danse Macabre’
poem — perhaps by Jean Le Fèvre — that was specifically
adapted for the mural. The mural in Paris was destroyed
in 1669, but the extant mural (circa 1500) in the village
church of Meslay-le-Grenet (near Chartres) can still serve
to give us an idea of its appearance (Figs. 3a and 3b).
The Paris Dance had an immediate impact. By 1426, the
poet John Lydgate had composed his Middle English
Dance of Death, which was explicitly based on the
Paris mural. Not long after, the most famous German
Totentanz mural was created in the cemetery of the
Dominican convent in Basel (Figs. 4a, 4b and 4c). Later
examples can be found as far away as Berlin, Beram
(Istria), Morella (Spain) and Inkoo (Finland).7 Basel was
unusual, however, in that it had two such murals: a
second mural, dating from the late 15th century, was
situated at the Dominican nunnery in Klingental. Both
murals in Basel were destroyed in the 19th century.
The Dance of Death is commonly connected with
the Black Death, which first hit Europe in the 1340s. Yet
while this recurring epidemic must have fostered an
increased awareness of one’s own mortality, a direct link
with the Dance is unlikely; after all, the theme’s popu-
larity is of a much later date.8 Even so, the Wet Nurse in
the Danse Macabre des Femmes complains of a swell-
ing between her arms and observes that the child in
her care is dying ‘depidimie’.9 In 1649, Matthäus Merian
linked the Totentanz mural in the Dominican convent in
Basel to the Plague that hit the city in 1439 at the time of
the Council of Basel. Merian even claimed that the Pope,
Emperor and King in the mural portrayed Pope Felix V
(elected as antipope in Basel in 1439), Holy Roman
Emperor Sigismund (d. 1437) and German King Albrecht II
(d. 1439), but recent research dates the mural to 1434–
1435 and this would rule out any link with the Plague or
with Felix V.10
Nonetheless, historical resonances can indeed be found
in France and England, where the worm-riddled, ‘som-
tyme crowned kynge’ near the end of the Dance would
have reminded contemporaries of the late kings Henry V
and Charles VI, who died in quick succession in 1422.
The image recalls a transi effigy (compare Fig. 2), and
the crown lying upside down by its head underlines the
political situation at the time. The official, uncrowned
heir to both thrones was Henry’s infant son (b. 1421), and
the anomaly of a kingdom without a crowned king caused
a national trauma in both countries. No Dauphin, Prince
or Duke occur in the French and English poems — a
telling omission. It was only in July 1429 that Joan of Arc
helped realise the Dauphin Charles’s coronation in Reims,
whereupon Henry VI was crowned in London in
November.11 Around 1430, a painted Dance of Death cycle
was installed at St Paul’s Cathedral in London based
on Lydgate’s poem to remind viewers that Death takes
all — even a conquering king in the prime of life.
The grim encounters between Death and the living
proved both popular and memorable. Around 1522,
Sir Thomas More cited the visual horror of London cycle
to compare ‘the loathly figure of our dead, bony ­bodies’
with the far worse imagination of one’s own death,
‘the deep conceived fantasy of death in his nature’.12
Thirteen years later, More would be meditating on this
same ‘fantasy’ while awaiting execution in the Tower
of London. It is also around this time that skulls appear
as a vanitas emblem in portraits, the most famous exam-
ple of these arguably the anamorphic skull in the fore-
ground of ­Holbein’s 1533 painting The Ambassadors
(National Gallery, London).
Yet alongside the morality and horror, the Dance also
presents social satire, as when Death offers the Pope
the dubious honour of starting the dance ‘comme le
plus digne seigneur’13 — the Papal Schism (1378–1417)
was a recent memory when the Paris mural was
painted. Nearly everyone is taken to task: Death also
orders the Emperor to exchange his regalia for a
shroud; the Bishop must render account of his flock;
the Abbot is reminded that the fattest people are the
first to rot; the Physician cannot cure himself; and the
Lover will lose his good looks. Death always comes
too soon, and few in the Dance are prepared. Thus the
poor Labourer would rather toil in any weather than
die. Meanwhile, in the Danse Macabre des Femmes
attributed to the French poet Martial d’Auvergne (d. 1508),
women ruefully recall their pretty clothes and jewels.
Even the Little Girl bemoans her ‘belle cotte’, while the
Bride must undress to lay with Death instead.14 Nor is
eroticism far from the satire, beyond the Lover losing
his looks and the Bride stripping for Death. Other
Dance scenes also contain the erotic. One of Holbein’s
woodcuts shows the Nun ogling a handsome lute
player in her cell (Fig. 1b), and in Niklaus Manuel Deutsch’s
mural in Bern, dating to the late 1510s, Death warns
the nubile Daughter that her red lips will turn pale and
her body ‘Ein fuler Mist’ as he fondles her breasts
(Fig. 5).15
Inevitably, the original chain of dancers that we still see
in extant murals did not lend itself well to prints.
Early German Totentanz editions present a single pair
per woodcut, whereas Guy Marchant’s 1485 edition
of the Paris mural combined two pairs per page.16 Both
formats present the figures but neither can reproduce
the chain. Holbein must have known the famous Basler
Totentanz mural well, but his woodcuts show indivi-
dual scenes in which the living meet their fate in fitting
surroundings, such as the Nun in her cell, the Plough-
man in his field, the Rich Man amongst his treasures and
the Bishop amidst a metaphorical flock of sheep.
Other artists developed the Dance yet differently. The
encounters of Death with the Maiden, the Lovers and
the Miser became favoured motifs, as in ­Hieronymus
Bosch’s Death and the Miser (National Gallery of Art,
Washington) and Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s 1525 paint-
ing Lovers Surprised by a Fool and Death (private
collection).17 Pieter Bruegel the Elder was evidently in-
spired by both Holbein and Bosch when he painted
his apocalyptic Triumph of Death (Fig. 6a). Here we see
several well-known characters from the Dance of
Death: an emperor in the lower left corner, a cardinal,
a mother with her child, an armed knight, noblemen,
burghers, peasants and a fool, who vainly tries to hide
under a table (Fig. 6b). Animated corpses attack the
living from all sides; the surrounding hills are littered
with human and animal skulls and bones and fires rage
in the distance. The painting is usually dated around
1562 and is thus too early to reflect the troubles of the 46
Dutch Revolt, but there was already great political and
religious tension: heretics were persecuted, tortured
and burnt, beheaded, drowned or hanged during the
reign of Philip II of Spain. One interesting detail is
the pair of musical lovers on the far right, oblivious to
their impending doom. Bruegel’s engagement with
Death in his work may be read as unintentionally pro-
phetic. By 1563, Bruegel had married Pieter Coecke’s
daughter Mayken; he would die just six years later.
Ultimately, the most effective way to illustrate the omni-
present threat of Death is to include oneself in the
Dance, and some did just that. The anonymous author
or preacher is prominently present at the start and
the conclusion of many murals (Fig. 3b), just as Lydgate
named himself explicitly in his last stanza, but they are
actually the transmitters. Far more poignant is Niklaus
Manuel’s self-portrait in the mural in Bern, which shows
him busy painting the group of ‘infidels’ before him
without noticing that Death is crawling up behind him.
This image inspired Hans Hug Kluber to add himself,
his wife Barbara Haller and their dead young son Hans
 Ulrich at the end of the Basler Totentanz when he
‘restored’ and modified the mural in 1568 (Fig. 4c).18
In Merian’s engravings, first published in 1621, two
corpses address the painter with the words ‘Hans Hug
Klauber laß Malen stohn [...] Dein Kunst, Müh, Arbeit
hilfft dich nit’.19

Kluber’s repainting of the Basler Totentanz was not

unique. In fact, the mural was repainted and altered
several times during its existence, and the same must
have happened elsewhere. We thus do not know the
extent to which Guy Marchant’s woodcut edition of
1485 is a reliable rendition of the lost mural in Paris,
because the mural may have been retouched or altered
in the years after its completion in 1425. No visual
record exists of the cycle in London that was lost when
Pardon Churchyard was demolished in 1549, while
another Dance of Death mural in the Guild Chapel in
Stratford-upon-Avon was whitewashed before or in
the 1570s.20 It is thus ironic that, despite the universality
of their message, many medieval and renaissance
Dance cycles have failed to survive. Some fragments
do remain of the Basler Totentanz, and we still have
many of Kaspar Meglinger’s Dance of Death paintings FIg. 5 Albrecht Kauw’s 1649 watercolour of
Death and the Daughter, after Niklaus Manuel
(1626–1635) on the Spreuer Bridge in Lucerne; it was
Deutsch’s Totentanz mural in Bern, dating
instead the Kappellbrücke with its painted scenes of local to the late 1510s, Historisches Museum, Bern
history that was ravaged by fire in 1993.

Man is mortal, and art may also prove transitory. This

is the sad conclusion of the King in the French poem:
47 ‘A la fin fault deuenir cendre’ — in the end, we must all
turn to ash.21 G
 FIg. 6A

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death

(complete work and detail), c. 1562, oil on panel, 48
Museo del Prado, Madrid

FIg. 6B
 1  See Christian Müller ed., Hans Holbein the
Younger: The Basel Years 1515–1532, Munich 2006,
pp. 471–477, cat. D. 21. Kristin Lohse Belkin
and Carl Depauw, Images of Death: Rubens Copies
Holbein, Antwerp 2000.
2  Transl.: The young die as soon as the old.
See Florence Warren ed., The Dance of Death,
Edited from MSS. Ellesmere 26/A.13 and B.M.
Lansdowne 699, Collated with the other Extant
MSS., EETS, o.s. 181, London 1931, repr. Wood­-
8  See Elina Gertsman, ‘Visualizing Death:
Medieval Plagues and the Macabre’, in: Franco
Mormando and Thomas W. Worcester eds,
Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque,
Kirksville, Missouri 2007, pp. 64–89.
9  See Ann Tukey Harrison ed., The Danse
Macabre of Women: Ms.fr. 995 of the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Kent/London 1994, p. 36.
10  See Monica Engel, ‘Der Tod zum Juden
17  See Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Vive l’amour? Lovers
and Death in the Medieval Danse Macabre’,
in: Stefanie Knöll ed., Frauen – Sünde – Tod,
Düsseldorf 2010, pp. 9–26. For the Fool, see
Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘“Alas, poor Yorick”: Death, the
Fool, the Mirror and the Danse Macabre’, in:
Stefanie Knöll ed., Narren – Masken – Karneval:
Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Kubin aus der
Düsseldorfer Graphiksammlung ‘Mensch und
Tod’, Regensburg 2009, pp. 20–32.

bridge 2000, p. 94, line 472.
3  Groupe de Recherches sur les Peintures
Murales, Vifs Nous Sommes … Morts Nous Serons.
La Rencontre des Trois Morts et des Trois Vifs
dans la Peinture Murale en France, Vendôme 2001.
4  See Kathleen Cohen, Metamorphosis of a
Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Berkeley 1973,
pp. 77–78 and pl. 31–32.
5  Transl.: I made the dance of Macabré (line 3078);
cf. P.G., ‘La Dance Macabré de Jean Le Fèvre’,
in: Romania 24, nr. 93, 1895, pp. 129–132.
im Basler Totentanz’, in: Das Münster, 66:2, 2013,
pp. 83–96.
11  See Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Death, memory
and commemoration: John Lydgate and
“Macabrees daunce” at Old St Paul’s Cathedral,
London’, in: Caroline M. Barron and Clive
Burgess eds, Memory and Commemoration in
Medieval England, Harlaxton Medieval Studies
20, Donington 2010, pp. 185–201.
12  Clark 1950 (as in n. 6), pp. 12–13.
13  Transl.: As the most eminent lord.
Warren 2000 (as in n. 2), p. 80, line 22.
18  See Tripps 2005 (as in n. 15), pp. 98–99.
19  Transl.: Hans Hug Kluber, abandon your
painting... Your art, effort and work will not help
you. Kaiser 1983 (as in n. 16), p. 274.
20  See Kate Giles, Anthony Masinton and Geoff
Arnott, ‘Visualising the Guild Chapel, Stratford-
upon-Avon: Digital Models as Research Tools in
Buildings Archaeology’, Internet Archaeology 32,
here ch. 4.6 http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/
issue32/1/4.6.html (file last updated 25 July 2012,
last viewed on 13 April 2017).
21  Warren 2000 (as in n. 2), p. 82, line 80.

6  See John Clark, The Dance of Death in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Glasgow 1950,
p. 92.
7  See Hélène and Bertrand Utzinger, Itinéraires
des Danses Macabres, Chartres 1996.
14  See Harrison 1994 (as in n. 9), p. 107.
15  See Transl.: foul dung. Johannes Tripps,
‘Den Würmer wirst Du Wildbret sein’: Der Berner
Totentanz des Niklaus Manuel Deutsch in den
Aquarellkopien von Albrecht Kauw (1649), Schriften
des Bernischen Historischen Museums 6,
Bern 2005, pp. 78–80.

16  See Gert Kaiser ed., Der tanzende Tod. Mittel-

alterliche Totentänze, Frankfurt am Main 1983.
49