Macabre dance

See also: macabre Dance (homonymy)

The macabre Danse is an element, more completed, macabre art of the Moyen-âge, 14th at the 16th century. It represents, in the literature, painting or the sculpture, the inexorable drive of all the human ones, whatever their social position, in an interdependent procession towards a common destiny. One sees there after a Pape, a bishop, a Moine, a Empereur, a King, a Seigneur, a Soldat, a middle-class…

The macabre Dance is described in several poems Latin S, French, German S or Italian S, generally anonymities. Throughout the 15th century and the beginning of 16th, this topic is painted has fresco on the walls of the churches and in the cemeteries of Northern Europe.

This form of expression is the result of an awakening and a reflection on the life and death, during one time when this one became more present and more traumatisante. The wars - especially the War One hundred Year old -, the famines and the Peste, which often the three riders of the Apocalypse represent, decimated the populations.

The macabre Dance underlines the vanity of the social distinctions, of which the destiny made fun, mowing the pope like the poor priest, the emperor like the Lansquenet.

Artistic context


The macabre Dance is a stage in the representation of Death. This topic appears after that of the Dit of three dead and the three sharp ones , of the Triomphe of Dead the , of the Ars moriendi , of the Mors of the Apple , the Vanité S and the Memento mori .

But whereas the lesson of the Triumph of death introduces the dying individual , having time to make a last examination of conscience, the macabre Dance immediately involves this one towards the rot, by showing a Death insensitive with the social inequalities.

15th century

In the beginning, the macabre Dance constituted the subject of popular stage performances, the Mystère S.

It thus took the form of verbal exchanges - generally of four lines - between the Death and 24 people arranged by hierarchical order. A paramount role was probably allotted there to the seven macabre brothers, to their mother and Eléasar. A representation took place besides with Paris in the cloister of Innocent in their memory. From where the name devoted in Latin of chorea macabæorum (macabre dance). Other theories claim that the “macabre” word comes from Arabic to makabir which means " tombeaux" or " cimetière" , or of a painter of the name of Macabre. The preaching of the Ordres beggars contributed to the diffusion in the Christendom of this topic of the inescapable destiny of the man and the equality of all in front of death.

  • One of the oldest figurations of known macabre Dance appears in Paris, in 1424, on the walls of the mass grave of the Cloître of the Innocent Saints. This fresco, now destroyed, comprised only men. She reached us through popular engravings which one finds in the Manuscript of Blois, with the Cabinet of the Prints of the National library of France.

  • Towards 1440, the English monk John Lydgate translated the poem and recopied the representation of the mass grave of the Innocent Saints on the Saint Paul church of London. The topic of the macabre Dance was diffused thus in England.

  • One finds around 1460, in the church of Lübeck, a macabre Dance appeared at the time of the passage of “black death” (the plague). This mural of the vault of dead the was partly annotated by Bernt Notke. The popular German worms were partially preserved until today.

the macabre dance is represented there in its simplest form: 24 human, ecclesiastical and laic figures, in the decreasing order of pope, emperor, empress, cardinal, king, to the peasant, young man, young woman and child. Each character always dances there with his death.
This fresco was destroyed during the Second world war. Two stained glasses carried out by Alfred Mahlau in 1955 - 1956 recall today in this vault this disappeared masterpiece.

  • Starting from the middle of the 15th century, of new frescos appears. They are carried out in the churches of Amiens, of Angers, Dijon or Rouen, as well on the ground as on the frontages.

  • In the medieval Spain , the Danzas of Muerte is representative of the crisis of the Espagnes to leaving the Bas the Middle Ages. The cultural attraction for this form of macabre dance in the Iberian peninsula will be taken again with the currency Viva Muerte of the nationalist camp at the time of the civil war at the 20th century.

With the dança mortal venid los nascidos
 that in el mundo soes of qualquier estado;
el that not quisiere has fuerça amidos
 facerle E to come muy toste parado.
Been able ya el freire your ha pedricado
 that todos vayais fazer penitencia,
el that not quisiere poner diligencia
 por semi not puede ser farmhouse esperado.

16th century

  • Starting from the middle of the 16th century, the macabre images of dances are renewed and become increasingly varied. The worms are sometimes abandoned.

  • With Basle, initially, the macabre Dances are transferred from the low city to the upper town, on the walls of the cloister. The number and the arrangement of the dancing couples remain identical but a priest is added to the beginning and a fisherman with the end. At the time of the destruction of the walls in 1805, there remains of the original only some fragments, although illustrations were preserved the worms parallel to. What became the famous one “died of Basle” gave fresh impulse to this category of representations, although poetry completely gave up the kind.

  • Herzog Georg de Sachse made carry out in 1534, along the wall of the third stage of its castle, a low-relief of stone. This macabre Dance was of a completely innovative composition with 24 funeral characters and three figures life size, without dancing couple. This work was very damaged by the large fire of 1701, then restored and transferred in the parish from Dresden.

  • This representation is at the origin of that of the church of Strasbourg, which shows various couples in which each one is invited to dance by its death.

  • macabre Dance of Marienkirche with Berlin date it also of the years 1470 - 1490. Nicolas Manuel paints a true macabre Dance between 1514 and 1522 on the walls of the cloister of Bern, consisted of 46 images, which are today accessible only in the form from reproductions.

The contribution of Hans Holbein

  • With the appearance of Hans Holbein the Young person, the macabre Dance adopts a very new artistic form. This one puts in scene the brutal irruption of Mort in work and the love of life. This representation takes the step on the idea that death does not save any social class.

Its works (generally of engravings) appeared as of 1530 and were widely diffused in the form of books starting from 1538.

Late centuries

  • Baudelaire and Strindberg wrote on the macabre dance, Liszt and Saint-Saëns put it in music.
Other authors exploited this topic, of which:

Mural representations

In France

Among the mural representations of the macabre Dance, France has several Fresque S interior:

In Switzerland

  • With Lucerne, the Spreuerbrücke “Bridge of the Dance of Deaths”, covered bridge going back to 1408 and its 67 panels of Kaspar Meglinger (1626-1635)

Gallery

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