Uprisings, epidemics and spontaneous deaths

Terrifying encounters with uprisings and epidemics across Europe were one result of my recent examination of the prints of the German painter and printmaker Alfred Rethel (1816– 1859). All the prints I considered have one symbol in common: the allegorical fi gure of Death. As a means of representing dangerous historical events, formidable and mysterious, this diabolical being would frequently deliver spontaneous death to his chosen. Rethel's Ein Todtentanz aus dem Jahre 1848 (A dance of death for the year 1848) was purchased in 2010 for the Baillieu Library Print Collection and serves as the gateway for my adventure through some new purchases which further develop this theme in the collection. Depictions of death have a long tradition in the visual arts, many stemming from the medieval idea of the dance of death—a series of individuals, whose social positions range from peasant to king, in a procession with a skeleton who represents death. 1 Many scholars believe the dance of death originated with the appearance of the plague, which took the lives of both rich and poor indiscriminately. 2 So depictions of death of this kind present the viewer with two ideas: that of an individual's constant vulnerability to death, and also that in death there is equality. An infl uential depiction of the dance of death in the print medium is Hans Holbein the Younger's (1497/8–1543) Dance of death, a series of woodcuts which fi rst appeared in book format in 1538. The Baillieu Library Print Collection has a set of the Dance of death (1680) by the Prague-born artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677) after Holbein. A 1913 privately printed version of Holbein's work is held in the Baillieu Library's Rare Book Collection. 3 As well as dance of death prints, also found in the collection originally donated by Dr J. Orde Poynton are memento mori prints, which depict a single individual and his or her encounter with death. 4 These prints from the Renaissance provide insights into our continuing enthralment with, and often fear of, death. Macabre prints, including those depicting the fi gure of Death, emerge as one of the distinct themes in the collecting tastes of the Doctors Poynton. Professor Charles Zika, who have selected prints based around these ideas for a project funded by the University Library's inaugural Scholarly Information and Innovation Grants. Their ambitious project, which uses a range of pre-1700 prints and rare books …