Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/667

 DANCE OF DEATH DANCING DISEASE 663 work. He afterward built the Giltspur street Compter and St. Luke's hospital, and in 1789 the Guildhall. Among his minor works are the Shakespeare gallery, Pall Mall, now the British institution, and the Bath theatre. The W. side of Finsbury square is also by him. He was one of the earliest members of the royal academy of London, and was until 1815 professor of architecture to the society, al- though he never delivered any lectures nor exhibited any of his drawings at its exhibitions. From 1811 to 1814 he published a series of por- traits, chiefly profiles, of the public men and artists of the day, engraved by William Dan- iell. He succeeded his father as city surveyor upon his death, Feb. 8, 1768, and held the of- fice till 1816, when he resigned in favor of his pupil W. Montague. He was buried in St. Paul's, near Wren and Rennie. DANCE OF DEATH (Lat. chorea Machabce- orum ; Fr. danse macabre, and dame des morts ; Ger. Todtentanz), a mediaeval religious dance, long a favorite subject of painting and poetry, in which persons of all ranks and ages were represented as dancing together with the skele- ton form of death, which led them to the grave. In the 14th century masked figures represent- ing death appeared during carnival, with the privilege of taking by the hand and dancing with whomsoever they might meet. With the approbation of the clergy, a sort of masquerade was performed in the churches, in which the chief characters in society were supported, dramatic conversations being introduced be- tween Death and the persons in the proces- sion, each of whom in turn vanished from the scene, as a symbol of departure from life. This custom, as represented by art, appears for more than three centuries in a vast number of forms, most various in pathos, humor, and grotesqueness ; in verse in nearly every Euro- pean language; and in paintings on town halls, in market places, in the arcades of bury- ing grounds, and on the walls of palaces, clois- ters, and churches. One of the most interest- ing poems on the subject is in Spanish, the Danca general de los muertos (found entire in the appendix to Ticknor's " History of Spanish Literature "), which belongs to the 14th cen- tury, and in which Death summons to his mor- tal dance first the pope, then the cardinals, kings, bishops, and so on, down to day labor- ers. Each makes some remonstrance, but in vain, "for still the cry is, Haste! and haste to all." Poetical inscriptions often accompanied the paintings, which are first traced in the southwestern parts of Germany, in Switzer- land, Alsace, and Swabia ; the oldest was one which formerly existed in a convent at Klin- genthal, near Basel, but which has long been wholly destroyed, and of which nothing is known but the fact of its existence. An in- scription on the wall says it was painted in 1274. Among the most celebrated dances of death are those of the cloister of the Domini- cans at Basel, painted in 1480, to commemorate a visitation of the plague, and several times re- newed, especially in 1568; those of the chapel of St. Mary's church at Lubeck, in the castle and cemetery of Dresden, at Annaberg, Lu- cerne, Strasburg, and Rouen, in the church of the Innocents at Paris, in the church of La chaise Dieu in Auvergne, in the crypts of the church of St. Michel at Bordeaux, and in the cathedral of Amiens; in the church of St. Paul in London, to which John Lydgate added verses that were translated from the French ; in the palace of St. Ildefonso in Spain ; and the famous painting of the Trionfo della morte in the campo santo of Pisa, by Andrea Orcagna, in the 14th century. In all 39 of these dances are mentioned, the latest being that at Stau- bingen, painted in 1763. Many have been preserved in engravings, are found on missals and on the margins of numerous old books, and in the 16th century were reproduced in miniature as ornaments for the sheaths of swords and poniards. The fresco at Basel was destroyed by the falling of the walls in 1805, only fragments of it being preserved in the city library; but in the 16th century it sug- gested to Holbein his celebrated series en- titled "The Dance of Death," which com- bines 53 distinct and most diverse scenes. Death here assumes various ironical costumes, while meeting with and overcoming persons in every condition of life. The older pictures are not divided into single scenes, but the skeleton appears leading after it a procession of all ranks and ages. All of the poems and paintings on this grim subject mingle sublimity and gro- tesqueness. The best works treating of it are those of Massmann, Literatur der Todtentdnze (Leipsic, 1841), and Baseler Todtentdnze (Stutt- gart, 1847) ; Peignot, JRecherches sur la danse des morts (Dijon and Paris, 1826); Langlois, Essai historique, philosophique et pittoresque sur les danses des worts, with 54 engravings (2 vols., Rouen, 1852) ; and Douce, " The Dance of Death " (London, 1833). DANCING DISEASE, or Tarantismns, an epi- demic nervous affection, apparently allied to chorea, at one time prevalent in Italy and oth- er countries in the south of Europe. It was long supposed to be caused by the bite of a large spider, the aranea tarantula; but as scarcely any of those affected with it had any consciousness of having been bitten by a spi- der or any other insect, and as in every in- stance it has been propagated mainly by phys- ical contagion, like chorea, demonomania, and other kindred affections, it undoubtedly origi- nated from the same causes. Tarantismus was first noticed in the 15th century, a period rife with cerebral and nervous affections, and is thus described by Baglivi : "When any are stung (or attacked with the disease), shortly after it they fall upon the ground, half dead, their strength and sense going quite from them. Sometimes they breathe with a great deal of difficulty, and sometimes, they sigh piteously ; but frequently they lie without any manner of