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Original fileTitle Page: Les simulachres & historiees faces de la mort
Holbein Danse Macabre 0
About This Work
This black-and-white print is a typographic title page featuring the printer's device of Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel. At the center, a three-faced winged figure sits atop a stone pedestal, holding an open book inscribed with 'NON OMNIA MORIAR' (I shall not entirely die). Two serpents are coiled around the base of the pedestal, each flanked by a globe—one topped with a cross and the other with wings. The text is arranged in distinct blocks above and below this central woodcut emblem, providing publication details in French and Latin.
This image served as the frontispiece for the first edition of Hans Holbein the Younger's seminal 'Danse Macabre' series, published in Lyon in 1538. The tricephalic figure and the Latin motto are quintessential expressions of the Renaissance preoccupation with the persistence of the soul and the reach of humanistic legacy beyond biological death.
Inscriptions(French, Latin)
Les simulachres & HISTORIEES FACES DE LA MORT, AVTANT ELE gammēt pourtraīctes, que artifi ciellement imaginées. NON OMNIA MORIAR Vſus me Genuit. A LYON, Soubz l'eſcu de C O L O I G N E, M. D. X X X V I I I.
Translation
The images and historical faces of death, as elegantly portrayed as they are artificially imagined. I shall not entirely die. Usage begat me (or: Use begat me). At Lyon, under the shield of Cologne, 1538.
Connected Texts
Hans Holbein the Younger
This is the title page for the seminal 1538 publication of his woodcut series 'Les simulachres & historiees faces de la mort'.