1725 Dance of Death Nobleman Plate
DESCRIPTION
This hand-colored copperplate engraving excerpted from a 1725 reissue of Matthäus Merian’s Todten-Tantz is one of a series of memento mori reminding viewers that death eventually levels us all—even the Nobleman, despite his bravery, status, and expertise in combat.
At the center of the sheet titled Todt zum Edelmann, or "Death and the Nobleman," is a copperplate engraving of a Totentanz, or “Dance of Death,” scene centered on a nobleman. In it, a gaunt, skeletal figure personifying death jauntily grapples the arm of a nobleman in ornate armor whose sword has fallen to the ground. Death is here characterized not so much as antagonistic as inevitable and even comforting. Granted he's pulling the nobleman away from this life and towards the next, but all the while Death is urging bravery and promising peaceful rest.
Surrounding this scene is a hand-drawn architectural border added by a later hand and unique to this piece. It shows two columns carved into helmeted knights and houses letterpress elements of a printer’s housekeeping such as the page number (71), a catchword (Todt) pointing to the following page, and dialogue between Death and the nobleman.
A rough translation of the dialogue reads:
Death to the Nobleman.
Now come along, you noble warrior,
here you must put your valour to work:
against Death, who spares no one.
Make your peace, and you shall be repaid.
The Nobleman
I have frightened many a man,
one who was covered in armour:
now grim Death fences with me,
and brings me into great distress.
The Totentanz
This plate was never meant to be viewed alone; it’s only one entry within the procession of figures that typifies the Totentanz genre. These works are composed of a series of scenes wherein a corpse or skeleton leads archetypes from across social strata towards their common end—death. Starting with a figure of universal power (usually a pope or emperor), each plate moves one rung down the social ladder. The majority of this descent moves towards particularity, showing locale-specific offices within the town of its production. In a final return to universality, though, the series ends with recognizable figures like the peasant, painter, mother and child, and Adam and Eve.
Though the engraved image originated from a mural on a 15th-century Dominican cemetery wall in Grossbasel, this plate comes from a 1725 Frankfurt reissue of Matthäus Merian’s Todten-Tantz, first published in 1621 and revised in 1649.
CONDITION
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