La Danse des Morts a Bale by Felix Schneider - 1875: The Dance of Death at Basel

Very good coloured copy of this souvenir from Basel

The Dance of Death engraved from the fresco paintings on the cemetery wall of St. John's church at Basle.

Grave d'apres les tableaux a fresque qui se trouvaient sur le mur du cimetiere de l'eglise St. Jean a Bale.

With 43 hand-coloured woodcuts of the Dance of Death by an unknown engraver. Only one, plate 42, is signed "X v BiZ" but it is almost illegible under the hand-colour. Second edition of this tourist souvenir after the first published by Otto Stuckert in 1858.

With text in French, English and German.

Includes the preacher's word, the ossuary or charnel house, and the double portrait of the bearded gentleman/grinning skull.

The images copy the work of Jacques-Antony Chovin after Matthaus Merian's original 1649 copperplates, and depict the figure of death as a cadaver rather than a skeleton.

Neatly rebacked with red buckram spine, original pictoral front board in black and red with image of charnel house, new endpapers, interior slightly uniformly age-toned but all color plates bright and vivid.

A very good copy of a 19th-century book aimed at the Basel tourist market, rare to find coloured.