Three scenes from the Dance of Death: The Emperor and the King; The Duke and the Count; The knight and the lawyer

These three sheets record part of the elaborate work painted by the major Swiss artist Niklaus Manuel Deutsch in the second half of the 1510s on a wall of the Dominican convent in Bern, demolished by 1660 (H.C. von Tavel in Niklaus Manuel Deutsch. Maler, Dichter, Staatsmann, exhib. cat., Bern, Kunstmuseum, 1979, pp. 252-286, figs. 57-71). Accompanied by a long poem, the decoration consisted of 41 scenes of men and women dancing with Death, as well as three religious scenes. A complete copy by the Strasburg artist Albrecht Kauw, dated 1649, is at the Bernisches Historisches Museum (inv. 822.1-822.24; see H. Herzog, Albrecht Kauw (1616-1681). Der Berner Maler aus Strassburg, Bern, 1999, pp. 33-38, nos. 2-25, ill.; J. Tripps and M. Kehrli, ‘Den Würmen wirst du Wildbret sein’. Der Berner Totentanz des Niklaus Manuel Deutsch in den Aquarellkopien von Albrecht Kauw, Bern, 2005). Kauw’s gouaches served as models for other copies, and the present ones may have been made after them.