In
repairing the church in 1824, it was accidentally discovered, and
carefully exposed; but it was so much injured that it fell into decay
soon after drawings had been made from it.
The Dance at Rouen was in the still existing Cemetery of St. Maclou, and
was not a painting, but a sculpture. It was not entirely completed
until 1526. The cemetery is surrounded by a covered gallery open on the
inside, where it was supported by thirty-nine columns, distant about
eleven feet from each other. Thirty-one of these still exist; and upon
the shaft of all but four of them, on the side facing the court of the
cemetery, is sculptured, in high relief, a group of two figures,--one a
living personage, and the other the cadaverous body by which Death was
represented. On the remainder were sculptured the Christian Virtues
and the Fates,--two on each column. The capitals of these columns are
decorated with figures quite in another manner. Cupids, naked female
figures, grotesque masks, and shapes--human and bestial--are ingeniously
substituted for the foliage usually found on that part of a column.
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