The Dance of Death (Penguin Classics)

One of the greatest and most grisly of all Renaissance works, Hans Holbein's The Dance of Death is a bravura sequence of miniature woodcuts showing the folly of human greed and pride. Each image is crammed with drama, wit and horror, as an ever-present, grinning skeleton comes for pope, emperor and peasant alike. Created amid the thriving print culture of the early sixteenth century, this triumphant imaginative feat took the medieval danse macabre theme and made it new. This edition reproduces a complete set of the work, along with examples of other paintings and woodcuts on this theme, while Ulinka Rublack's commentary explores how Holbein's turbulent Reformation world lent his art radical resonance.