Emblems of Mortality

The earliest Edition of the Imagines Mortis which I have as yet seen, is one printed, as appears from the Colophon at the End, by Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel, in small 4to. at Lyons, in 1538: It is in French, and its Title is as follows: “Les Simulachres & Historiees faces de la Mort, autant elegamment pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginees: A Lyons, soulz l’Escu de Cologne.” But Papillon, in Loco supra cit, tells us, that the Cuts to the Imagines Mortis must have been done about the Year 1530, for that the four first of them occur among Holbein’s Cuts to the Old Testament, printed in 1539; and that it is apparent from those among the Scripture Cuts, that the Blocks had then already furnished many Thousands of Impressions