020

  • The Child (Job xiv, 1 and 2) from Dance of Death

  • First published in 1538
  • Hans Holbein the Younger (German 1498-1543)
  • Woodblock print in Les simulachres et historiees faces de la mort, autant elegammët pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées [sic], (Images and illustrated facets of death, as elegantly depicted as they are artfully conceived)
  • 6.5 x 4.9 cm., 2-5/8 x 1-15/16" image
  • Arts Exhibits Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 91.72.a and b

Essay by Jessica Feinman, Class of 2008

In his fascinating and imaginative Dance of Death woodcuts, Holbein transformed a traditionally well-known medieval art form to a new vehicle for his own Renaissance time period. Previously the theme had always represented Death's arrival as a punishment for a person's sins. It was during the Renaissance period that the Dance of Death moved away from this theme of retribution to focus instead on the state of humankind, frequently with mocking undertones (Collins 29). A memento mori (reminder of death) generally appeared as the familiar skeletal form of Death, who served to remind people of the frailty of their passing life in comparison to the eternal life for which their soul was destined. People of the time believed that after death all would be judged by God.

With the woodcut of The Child, Holbein depicted a living drama, showing Death's sudden intrusion into everyday life. This monochromatic woodcut shows Death, in the form of a skeleton, leading a young child away from his mother while she prepares dinner over an open fire. With one hand, the mother clutches her cooking pan and with the other holds her head in horror.

Another child behind her also grabs at his hair as he watches, with panicked eyes, his younger sibling being wrenched away from their home. By placing this scene in a common house with a family performing the familiar task of preparing a meal, Holbein created a picture of an immediate reality, of an innocent child being taken away by death from a mother who, contrary to her maternal instincts, cannot save him. The Child was first published as part of Les simulachres & histories faces de la mort in 1538, a book containing forty-one of Holbein's woodcuts (Clark 71). With the Renaissance invention of the printing press and its facility to produce multiple copies of books, rather than the medieval tradition of the handmade illuminated manuscript (web gallery 12), books became more accessible to larger audiences.