the Little Passion of thirty-seven small cuts, are his best known wood engravings. Thirty-five of the original wood blocks are in the British Museum.
Hans Holbein, in his well-known Dance of Death series of cuts, reaches the high-water mark of wood engraving. These were in all probability cut by Hans Lützelburger.
This remarkable series has been not only copied by various engravers but has been pirated in every conceivable manner. The first edition was published at Lyons in 1538, consisting of forty-one cuts. It was many times reprinted there. In all the editions subsequent to the third, which appeared in 1545, additional cuts are introduced. The eighth edition of 1562 contains fifty-eight cuts. Piracies were published at Venice in 1545 and at Cologne in 1555, and subsequently at other places with the subjects engraved on copper. Hollar etched about thirty of the subjects after a Cologne edition.
Even Holbein was hardly original, as the subject had appealed to former artists and was not uncommonly represented in the fifteenth century on the walls of cloisters of churches. At Lubeck, at Leipsic, at Dijon, at Paris, and at old St. Paul's in London there is a record of the subject, known in France at the end of the fifteenth century under the title of the Danse Macâbre. It was quite a favourite subject with old artists, especially of the German school, to depict Death at its ghastly work. The great text of all these artists was, "In the midst of life we are in death," and the subject appears repeatedly.
