Death Becomes Her

Une chambrière et une entremetteuse
AND Une régente et une femme de chevalier.

Une femme d'accueil (ou hotesse) et une nourrice
AND Une femme mariée et une coquette

Une vieille fille et une cordelière
AND Une reine et une duchesse

Une bergère et une infirme
AND Une sage-femme et une petite fille

Une bigote et une folle
AND Une revendeuse et une amoureuse

La gueule du Leviathan et la mort sur son cheval
AND Les âmes damnés aux Enfers.

In the 'Danse Macabre' genre that derives from the now lost paintings on the walls of the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris [1424], the famous Parisian printer Guyhot Marchant is said to have preserved the original illustrations in his 1485 publication, 'Danse Macabre'.¹

Following from the success of the original work, a second Marchant book was released in 1491: 'Danse Macabre des Femmes' from which the first 6 images above are taken (all 36 woodcuts are available at BNF - scanned from a microfilm of 'Cy est la Danse Macabre des Femmes Toute Hystoriée et Augmentée', 1491 in 2 volumes)

The series follows the traditional pattern of a 2-part didactic poem whereby death calls women from all walks of life to join the inevitable 'Dance of Death', and the women respond. An illuminated manuscript was also made of the series and together they contribute some further understanding about the lives of medieval women - as investigated in the 1994 'The Danse Macabre of Women: Ms. fr. 995 of the Bibliotheque Nationale' Ed. Ann Tukey Harrison, Kent State University Press.

Both the original and female versions of Marchant's 'Danse Macabre' books came to be combined in a single publication and the Médiathèque de l’Agglomération Troyenne have a wonderful web presentation of a late 17th century ammalgamated text (click the image for a flash 'turn the pages' view or click bottom left for a zoomable html version).

The second set of images above come from the Cornell University Rare books Luna Insight browser collection. The only information available states: 'Dis des estats (Les dis des eites) 1513' in the 'Heures a lusaige de Paris' collection. [You can see those words - actually, I think Cornell have transcribed them wrong - in the 3rd last illustration, in red. I read it as something like: 'A talk with the citizens and death's response'.] I feel quite confident they belong to the 'Danse Macabre' genre but alas, I couldn't uncover any further information. (there are no more of these images at Cornell)

• See: 'Guyot Marchant’s Danse Macabre. The Relationship Between Image and Text' by David A. Fein, 2000 [pdf]. {html}
  
• ' 'Oh Death!': Death, Dying, and the Culture of the Macabre in the Late Middle Ages' Prepared by Emily Rebekah Huber as part of the Camelot Project at the University of Rochester, New York state.
• ¹I've now found the earliest book version of the 'Danse Macabre' online, from the 1460s, which I'll post somewhere along the line.

Burma Life

Tallah Pya-that. Funeral car and spire.

Threshing Paddy.

Yahan Chwa Thee. Rahan's procession.

Yok-thay-pweh. Marionettes.

Mee-eim-byan. Fire balloon.

[detail from] Sun-gyee-loung. A grand distribution of alms.

"The blessedness of alms-giving is a doctrine carefully taught by the Buddhist religion, and the people esteem it a favour to be allowed to offer to their Hpoongyis. After the long Lent (WAH) is over, many of the young novices leave the monasteries and return to the world.

A month later, in the month TA-SOUNG-MON [November] there is a grand religious offering in the early morning as shewn in our picture. The whole body of Monks in the district or quarter pass in file through a covered way, and each receives as much as he and his attendants can carry."

Nwah-leh-pyaing. Bullock cart race.

Pagoda Htee-smith. Htee-lot-thama.

[detail from] Hpon-gyee Kyoung. Monasteries.

Sin-mya. Elephants.

Burmese carpenter.

Cremation. Mee-thin-gyo-thee Hpon-gyee-bya.

Matayah-koung-eim. A Burmese house

Gaudama Buddha.

These watercolour sketches from 1897 were painted by a local Burmese artist. For each of the ~90 illustrations in the album there is an accompanying description by a missionary. 'Watercolour Paintings of Burmese Life' [Ms. Burm. a. 5] is online at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. {note the thumbnail view button at the top once you click 'Open Item'}. All of the above images were loaded at full size (the details come from unspliced zoomify screencaps) and were very slightly cleaned up - removing pencil additions and some of the most overt page staining.

Kyushu Medical Books

Gozonoshugonarabin (undated)
I *think* some of those objects are meant to be body organs.

Zentaishinron, 1854
comparative anatomy

Orandakinso (undated)
I think those circular figures are the legend for the anatomy points
(pressure or energy or acupuncture) in the body charts. [It took me a
while - I thought they were cross sectioned veins or blood cells at first]

Shinkyokuzusetsu (undated)

Kotsudoseigozusets, 1744

Majimaganryonozu (undated)
All the different flavours of pinkeye.

Meikakyusensanpen (undated)
Umm...

Naikeizusetsu (undated)
I'm sure I've posted that figure on the right previously. You have to wonder
how they came to be so stylized. Ignorant artist? Intentional for teaching
purposes? Or perhaps it was just the result of copying from a narrow range
of source material during the foreign exclusion in the 17th/18th/19th centuries?

Hobakuzushikifugen (undated)

Hosonozu (undated)
I'd be thinking 'alien impregnation' rather than dermatological
condition if I woke to see anything like those faces in the mirror.

Juteikaitaishinsho, 1843
The artist had obviously been perusing European anatomy texts.

Kodomosodaturuoshi, 1840
'How to silence and change your baby at the same time'.
Actually, there was another book with a very similar illustration but it
was more in the way of clearing a choking child's mouth. However, the poses
and the faces here don't really project 'care' so much as rabid infanticide.

Gozobanashi (undated)

Gyuzansenseikeirak (undated)

Anpukuzukai, 1827

Geryohiroku (undated)

[click to enlarge images to full size]


This assembly of illustrations comes from the first half of the 112 rare Japanese medical texts online at Kuyshu University ('List of Titles'). The names above derive from the image URLs and are presumably the titles in english - I don't have an Asian language pack on this machine so I couldn't try to translate any of the notes. [LINK UPDATED Sept. 2013 --> I don't think this is the same as the original page: it may well be that the rare texts are now offline: see this]

Many of the 56 books are are more like short pamphlets and there are a couple of herbals and 2 or 3 books on devices such as instructions to build a humidifier. As you can see above, a lot of the pages have suffered extensive silverfish or other vermin damage, so it's a good thing they've digitized the collection. I'll look through the other half of the books in the future.

Addit: See Part Two.