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2. Allaert Claesz (1508-ca. 1565) Dancers with Death
Engraving, 1562, from Death-Dance, 86 x 65 mm., Hollstein 169, Bartsch IX-483-3, Nagler I-260-7, ex collection: AAF (not in Lugt). A fine impression on laid paper, trimmed on or just within the platemark but complete. The image is a fascinating composite of two different traditions of sixteenth-century imagery: wedding dancers and the dance of death. Death playing the xylophone derives, of course, from Holbein; the wedding dancers from Beham and Aldegrever. But, apparently, no one had put them together this way before Claesz, who added the hour glass in the lower right corner of the image, to make doubly certain that his message could not be missed. An exceedingly rare print from an apparent set of which only a few images are actually known. |
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