Emblems of Mortality representing, in upwards of fifty cuts, death seizing all ranks and degrees of people

Emblems of Mortality; representing, in upwards of fifty cuts, death seizing all ranks and degrees of people

The Work here presented to the Reader is a Copy, with a small Variation noticed hereafter, as to the Cuts, and a Translation, as to the Letter Press, of one well known to the Curious by the Title of Imagines Mortis, or The Images of Death; which is reported to be in reality indebted for its Existence to an Event that Boccace did but feign as the Occasion of writing his Decameron; I mean the Calamity of a Plague: And its History is as follows. Pope Eugenius IV. having summoned a Council to meet at the City of Basle, or, as it is more usually called, Basil, in Switzerland; it accordingly met there in the Year 1431, and continued to sit for Seventeen Years, Nine Months, and Twenty-Seven Days, or, according to Mr. Walpole[1], but Fifteen Years in the whole; and at this Council the Pope himself, and after his Death his Successor[ii] Felix V. Sigismond Emperor of Germany, Albert II. then King of the Romans, and many other Princes and Persons of distinguished Rank were present. During the Sitting of this Council, viz. in the Year 1439, the City of Basil was visited with a Plague, which raged for some Time with extreme Violence, and carried off many of the Nobility, and several Cardinals and Prelates who attended that Council, some of whom were interred in the very Cemetery where the Painting, of which we are about to speak, now is; and, on the Cessation of the Distemper, the surviving Members of the Council, with a View to perpetuate the Memory of this Event, and of their providential Deliverance from its Effects, caused to be painted in Oil on the Walls of the Cemetery, near the Convent of the Dominicans, a Dance of Death, representing all Ranks of Persons, from the Pope to the Peasant, as individually seized by Death; adding also to each Figure eight Lines in German, four of them containing an Address from Death to them severally, the other four their Reply. The Name of the Painter employed on this Occasion has not been transmitted down to us with Certainty; but some Persons have imagined that this Painting was the Work of Hans Holbein: Whether it were done by him or another, shall be hereafter considered; but, in the mean Time,[iii] we shall here proceed to relate the subsequent History of the Painting itself. It is, however, to be observed, that Matthew Merian, who, in 1649, published in German, at Franckfort, in small Quarto, a Book entitled Todten Tanz, or Deaths Dance, containing Engravings from the above-mentioned Painting[2], and from the Preface to whose Work, as translated into French, in an Edition printed at Basil in 1744, most of the foregoing Facts are extracted, does not speak in positive Terms as to the precise Time when the original Figures were painted, but only says, that they are believed, and with great Probability, to be of that Time in which he had placed them; in further Confirmation of which he has noticed, that Sigismond was[iv] himself a Lover and extraordinary Patron of the Arts, and had always about him a Number of Artists; and that John ab Eyck, the Inventor of Oil Painting, flourished in his Reign; but Mr. Warton[3] has related (though it does not appear on what Authority) not only that Holbein was the Painter, but that the Subject in Question was painted in 1543; in which I conceive him misinformed: For Merian was, as he himself tells us, a Native of Basil, and possibly might have had his Account by Tradition; and, had the Painting been of no earlier a Date than 1543, it is hardly probable (considering too that it is in Oil) that it should have been so much injured by Time as to stand in Need, as we find it did, of an almost total Repair in 1568: To all which I add, that Merian seems so well satisfied of the Truth of his Account, that he tells us further that the Figures were drawn from Nature, and are dressed each in the Habit of the Time; and that those of the Pope, Emperor, and King, are respectively Portraits of Felix V. who succeeded Eugenius IV., Sigismond Emperor of Germany, and Albert II., King of the Romans; all of whom, as we have before remarked, were present at the Council. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 65245
Author: Hawkins, John Sidney
Release Date: May 3, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Hawkins, John Sidney, 1758-1842
Illustrator: Holbein, Hans, 1497-1543