Memento mori

organ Library has an exhibition on Hans Holbein up which I went to see with my friend J. There weren't many of his celebrated portraits but instead we learned of Holbein's work in other genres. And in this cossetted place we felt - in ways which may or may not have been intended - the uneasy relationship of art and wealth, and how they together try to escape death by staring it down. The highlight was a series of woodblock prints Holbein designed and engraver Hans Lützelburger carved around 1526 which took the dance of death motif in virtuosic new directions. In scene after wittily designed scene, death surprises people in the midst of their lives. Here we have Death and the Clergyman, Priest, Monk, Nun, Old Woman, Doctor, Rich Man, Merchant, Skipper, and Knight, each a marvel - and only a fourth of the total set. Frustratingly, the exhibition gave little information about how these objects were used and by whom (some showed up in books) but it was hard to imagine the main effect was, or was intended to be, devotional. (Likewise the Death Alphabet of 1523, from which I took my opening capital.)

What about an image like this one, one of my favorites, Death and the Countess. You might think it would discourage wealthy people from ostentatious ornamentation - surely a temptation to the impish skeletons of death, ready to hang garlands of bones around your neck? It's a more complicated dance, as another part of the exhibition, devoted to opulent medallions Holbein also designed, suggests.

None of his medallions survive but some of his designs do, and this painting, of an unidentified woman wearing one. Centered on a luminous dark gemstone, it tells the hardly joyful story of Lot's Wife, seen at the moment at which she is punished for looking back at the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrha and becomes a pillar of salt. Or precious stone? How is this supposed to communicate the piety of the wearer? She's learned from Lot's wife not to ... what? But it turns out these kinds of broaches and medallions were all pushing the envelope. The exhibition included a snazzy hatpin of John the Baptist's head on a silver platter full of blood, Prudence regarding herself in a gemstone (!) mirror, and Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac.

Something is going on here that I don't understand (and the exhibition did not explain), a play of power, piety and performance, humanism, humility - and  allows humor! Death gets the last laugh, of course, but we're laughing along with it?