" In this word is the key to the popularity of the
Dance.
The most important and interesting of these pictured Dances of Death
were those at Bale, at Strasbourg, and at Rouen. That at Bale consisted
of thirty-nine groups, in the first three of which appear a Pope, an
Emperor, and a King. These were portraits of Pope Felix V., the Emperor
Sigismund, and King Albert II., of Rome, all of whom were present at the
Council, by whose order, as we have seen, the Dance was painted. The
last group of this Dance shows the seizure of the painter's child by
Death. It having been almost destroyed by time, the wall on which it was
painted was torn down about a hundred years ago; but engravings had been
made of it in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The Dance at
Strasbourg, like that at Bale, and many others, was on the wall of
a Dominican convent. It was painted in arched compartments, and is
peculiar in that its groups consist of many figures, among whom Death
intrudes, and carries off one, generally the principal personage of the
company. It was painted about 1450, and probably by the eminent German
painter, Martin Schongauer; but having been utterly neglected and
forgotten, it was finally plastered over, no one knows when.
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