Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), famed for his portraits and his satirical Dance of Death woodcuts, also lent his hand to the margins of Erasmus’s celebrated text In Praise of Folly ( Moriae Encomium ). First published in 1511, Erasmus’s witty essay personifies Folly as a woman who praises her own influence over popes, princes, scholars, and common folk alike. It became one of the defining works of Renaissance humanism, mocking vanity and corruption with laughter rather tha

Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), famed for his portraits of Erasmus and Henry VIII, also produced a remarkable series of woodcuts in Basel in the 1520s. Published in 1538, these images became known as the Dance of Death . Each scene shows Death — a skeletal figure — intruding upon people of every rank: pope, emperor, merchant, child. The message was clear: mortality spares no one. What made Holbein’s version distinctive was its medium . Earlier Dance of Death  cycles were fre

The standard whist deck has 52 cards in 4 suits: this is said to be symbolic: one card for each week of the year, and a suit for each...

This is our completion of a set of cards prefigured by El Lissitzky (1890-1941) in a series of collage paintings from the 1920s:...

On the 24th of January, 1928, Ototaro N. Yamamoto of San Gabriel CA, a flower raiser by profession, patented a new version of Hanafuda,...