The Physician

Category

Library Item

Item no

28466

Title

The Physician

Description

Death leads an elderly man to the physician, to whom he also presents a urine sample. The doctor doesn't seem to recognise Death or see the hourglass on his desk. The message, however, is that he will die like his patient, and that Death is more powerful than all learning and all medicine. The caption printed below the image reinforces this; it urges the Doctor to cure himself, or rather, to remember his own mortal weakness.

Artist / maker

Hollar, Wenceslaus

Date

1794

Size

7.5 x 6.0 cm

Type

Engraving

Location

Art and Design Library

Wenceslaus Hollar's Dance of Death series was first published in 1651. The prints were initially successful, but became unfashionable in the following century. However, they were revived in the 1780s by a Swiss publishing family, the Mechels; from then onwards Hollar's engravings were reprinted in a number of different editions. This image is from a 1794 edition, which was edited and introduced by the academic and Dance of Death expert, Francis Douce; it is part of Central Library's Dance of Death Collection.
Hollar's engravings were supposedly based on a famous Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger; this is why some of the prints bear the initials 'HB.i. ('Holbein designed this') as well as W.H. (Wenceslaus Hollar). In spite of this, many of Hollar's engravings are more like Arnold Birckmann's copies of Holbein's cuts than the originals.

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People > Body parts > Skeletons

People > Health and safety > Doctors

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