Get into the groove with these skeletons, perfect for fans of all things spooky!
The Old Woman is one of three prints from The Dance of Death series in the Whitworth’s Collections, the others being The Abbess and The Nun. The series is often said to have been designed by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) and transformed into woodcuts by the talented blockcutter Hans Lützelberger (1495-1526)- to whom our three woodcut prints from the series are attributed.
The danse macabre or dance of death was a concept expressed in visual art, music, poetry and through other means during the Late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. It conveyed that, no matter one’s social status, death was the fate of all human beings and could sneak up on you at any moment. The titular subject of The Old Woman accepts her fate rather serenely and walks along with the skeletons representing death, unbothered by them and clutching what may be a rosary. She is far more ready for death than the screaming abbess or the sinful nun in the other prints we have attributed to Lützelberger, who arguably should be better prepared for death than a poor, old woman given their occupations. Their lack of piety might be interpreted as a criticism against those who were supposed to lead moral lives and devote themselves to God but instead abused their positions of power. The skeletons who guide the old woman are far more jovial and less sinister in appearance than the skeleton who sneaks up on the nun and the one who drags the abbess away. They’re doing a nice little jig as they guide the old woman along- or is it a monster mash?
The Old Woman was hand traced and transformed into a colouring sheet by Steph from the Visitor Team. You can download a pdf version of the colouring sheet below:
Further reading
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/death/holbein.html
Erika Mary Boeckeler, Playful Letters: A Study in Early Modern Alphabetics (University of Iowa Press, 2017).
A Place Between The Trees 