The Duke (Dance of Death Series)

Medium:
Etching

This plate is one of a series by Hollar based on earlier Dances of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger and Abraham van Diepenbeeck. It shows the haughty Duke shunning a poor beggar woman and her child, oblivious to the fact that Death, the skeleton, looms just behind them. As with other scenes from the Dance of Death, this is intended as a reminder that wealth and worldly status mean nothing in the face of death, the great leveller.

(Text: Emily Wilkinson)