Dance of Death: The Child (c. 1526): Art, History and Details

Dance of Death: The Child (c. 1526) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hans Holbein the Younger (German, active England and Switzerland, 1497/98–1543).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Dance of Death is the most celebrated series of woodcuts designed by Holbein. The forty-one blocks were cut by Hans Lützelburger in the years immediately before his death in 1526, though the set was not published until 1538. Dance of Death originated as a drama in the middle of the 14th century. Following widespread epidemics such as the black plague, these plays took place in a cemetery or churchyard. Actors, dressed in pale costumes painted to resemble skeletons, personified Death and summoned a group of people from all social classes in a dancelike procession. In a period when the life span was short, the purpose of the Dance of Death was to remind the populace to prepare for the Last Judgement.

Object facts

• Title: Dance of Death: The Child
• Date: c. 1526
• Creator attribution: Hans Holbein the Younger (German, active England and Switzerland, 1497/98–1543)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1929.169

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Woodcuts: Dance of Death Series by Hans Holbein the Younger." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 16, no. 8 (October 1929): 141-151.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.