Dance of Death, the Noblewoman / Married Couple

Dance of Death, the Noblewoman / Married Couple

These images represent a Noblewoman and her husband holding hands while a skeleton plays the drums near them. The skeleton in the first three images is presented with hair, a traditionally feminine trait, whereas it appears without it in the last three images. The presence and absence of hair is a contradictory sign of the death's gender or the lack of it. The location of the drum is in front of the genital area of the skeleton, covering every trace of sexual organs and thus mocking the absence of genitalia.

Hollar, Wenceslaus (1607-1677) (Image 1)
Hollar, Wenceslaus (1607-1677) (Image 2)
Birckmann, Arnold (c. 1500-1542) (Image 3)
Mechel, Christian von (1737-1817) (Image 4)
Schlotthauer, Joseph (1789-1869) (Image 5)
Douce, Francis (1757-1834), Bonner, George Wilmot (1796-1836) and Byfield, John (1788-1841) (Image 6)

Image 1:
Found on the "The Dance of Death" webpage:
http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=hollar-35

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191102234749/http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=hollar-35

Image 2:
Found on the "The Dance of Death" webpage:
http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=hollar-c35

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190903171316/http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=hollar-c35

Image 3:
Imagines mortis, by Vauzelles, Jean de (1555). Birckmann, Arnold printer. Köln, Germany. In Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes http://www.bvh.univ-tours.fr/Consult/index.asp?numfiche=247 f. C4, Illustration 35, the Noblewoman/ married couple.
http://www.bvh.univ-tours.fr/Consult/consult.asp?numtable=B372615206%5F8768&numfiche=247&mode=3&ecran=0&offset=46

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200903174632/http://www.bvh.univ-tours.fr/Consult/consult.asp?numtable=B372615206_8768&numfiche=247&mode=3&ecran=0&offset=46

Code: 8768

Also found on the "The Dance of Death" webpage:
http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=birckmann-35

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200112145951/http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=birckmann-35

Image 4:
Le Triomphe De La Mort (The Triumph Of Death), by Holbein, Hans. Mechel, Christian von (ed.) (1780). Page 45, Illustration 23.
http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/content/pageview/2380866

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200903175911/http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/content/pageview/2380866


Also found on the "The Dance of Death" webpage:
http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=mechel-35

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170729005357/http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=mechel-35

Image 5:
Hans Holbein's Todtentanz: in 53 getreu nach den Holzschnitten lithographirten Blättern (Hans Holbein's Dance of Death: in 53 sheets faithfully lithographed from the woodcuts) by Holbein, Hans ed. Schlotthauer, Joseph. München: Schlotthauer, (1832). Illustration 35. Das neue Ehepaar. (the Married Couple), p. 119. Found in Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Germany. URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:061:1-71624 
http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/content/pageview/2642546

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200903180820/http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/content/pageview/2642546

Also found on the "The Dance of Death" webpage:
http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=schlotthauer-35

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170729005024/http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=schlotthauer-35

Image 6:
The Dance of Death, published by Douce (1833). Woodcutters were Bonner and Byfield. Found in The Dance of Death by Gilles Corrozet and Jean de Vauzelles (2007). Image X. The Empress (Danie iiii.). In Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21790/21790-h/21790-h.htm

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200617165113/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21790/21790-h/21790-h.htm

Also found on the "The Dance of Death" webpage:
http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=douce-35

Archived in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181130025930/http://www.dodedans.com/Exhibit/Image.php?lang=e&navn=douce-35

Image 1: 1651
Image 2: 1816
Image 3: 1555
Image 4: 1780
Image 5: 1832
Image 6: 1833

Woodcut.