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View at the museum ↗The Knight and Death, from The Dance of Death
Wenceslaus Hollar1651
- Attribution
- Wenceslaus Hollar (Bohemian, 1607-1677) after Hans Holbein the younger (German, c.1497-1543)
- Medium
- Etching in black on ivory wove paper
- Physical dimensions
- Sheet, trimmed within platemark: 7.1 × 5.2 cm (2 13/16 × 2 1/16 in.)
- Credit line
- The Wallace L. DeWolf and Joseph Brooks Fair Collections
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Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Hans Holbein’s famous Dance of Death woodcut series of 1538 (augmented in 1545) illustrated the medieval trope of the inescapability of mortality, regardless of one’s social rank or piety. These later etched copies by Hollar (1920.2251 and 1920.2259) capture the flavor of the original, showing a Landsknecht at two customary activities: hoisting his two-handed sword on the battlefield and gambling indoors. The fact that the soldier’s opponent in both cases is Death personified does not bode well for his chances.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0