The Emblem Shelf
The Dance of Death
Whatever your station, the same partner waits.
- Work
- from Les simulachres de la Mort
- Maker
- Hans Holbein the Younger
- Date
- 1538
- Source
- Les simulachres de la Mort, Lyon, 1538 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
Death, a lively skeleton, leads away a figure who plainly would rather stay — a plate from the Dance of Death, the medieval procession in which Death comes for every rank in turn, pope and emperor and ploughman alike. Hans Holbein the Younger's woodcut series of 1538 is the most famous of them, tiny scenes of terrible wit in which the skeleton interrupts each life at its business. The dance was a great levelling image: whatever your station, the same partner waits. Holbein drew it with more comedy than dread, which is exactly what gives the series its sting. Here is one of its encounters, held still for a moment.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Dance of Death printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from Les simulachres de la Mort (1538), held by Les simulachres de la Mort, Lyon, 1538 · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
