This book is titled La Plus Ancienne Danse Macabre au Klingenthal a Bale and refers to a series of historic wall paintings originally painted around 1312 on the cloister walls of the Klingenthal Monastery in Basel, Switzerland, then documented through watercolors by Emmanuel Buchel in the 1760’s and reproduced here by J. J. Berthier in 1896. The 1312 date makes them one of the earliest, if not the earliest, visual representations of the Danse Macabre theme, although some scholars date the earliest recorded images to a later period in Paris.  
The original mural from 1312 is lost, but the images were preserved in detailed watercolors by Buchel between 1766 and 1768 - the images depicted skeletons or corpses leading living people from all stations of life, from pope to peasant, in a dance to their graves, and the purpose of these images was to serve as a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability and impartiality of death - everyone dies.
Emmanuel Buchel (1705 - 1775) was a Swiss painter who was known for the use of bright colors, and the high point of his career was being commissioned to reproduce the painting of “The Dance of Death” in Basel in 1773. The project was difficult to execute, because the original painting from 1312 was a mural which had undergone numerous renovations and was damaged by weather, wind, and vandalism. Büchel worked on it diligently and painted with his characteristic touch of vivid colors, but the painting was so deteriorated that the whole wall was demolished 32 years later. 
When it comes to Buchel’s Dance of Death from 1766 to 1768, the situation was quite different. He saw the original medieval painting in 1766, it was painted on the wall of a churchyard in Basel and protected by a lean-to-roof, and it was  better protected than the mural started in 1773.
Büchel started in 1766 by copying the dialogues. He wrote the letters that were legible with dark ink, the indistinct ones with gray ink, and the words he did not understand he wrote in blue. Büchel became frustrated with the quality of the mural, and the next year, he made another folder containing sketches of all the figures, but without dialogue. The rest of the work took place at home, and in 1768 he and his daughters produced a third folder that combined text and images. The three portfolios together with his copious notes and observations are kept in the Klingenthal Museum. 
And now there is controversy because some scholars believe Buchel misread the date on the mural as 1312 and he later changed the date to 1512. 
R. P. J.J. Berthier was Joachim Joseph Berthier (1848-1924), a Swiss Dominican friar, a professor of theology at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, and a scholar who translated Dante's works while working on stained glass windows at the Cathedral of St. Nicholas of Flue in Freiburg.
The book itself is bound in beautiful marbled boards, the spine has a maroon label with gilt rules and a gilt title on the label, blank endpapers, then the original wrapps by Berthier bound in, the title page has a terrific engraving to introduce the reader to the idea of skeletons and death, the page on the obverse of the title page has a long pencilled note in German about Berthier which mentions the Basel Library (Basler Bibliiothek) and says the book is a very rare and sought-after work (“Sehr seletenes und gesuchtes Werk”), then the half-title, followed by a page which says the book was legally deposited in December 1896 - does that make this a first edition by Berthier? - then a repeat of the title page without the  engraving, an eight-page introduction, an eight-page preface by the illustrator (“Preface Du Dessinateur”), the text begins on page 17 and runs to page 97, followed by a blank page and two pages of a Table of Contents (“Table Des Matieres”), the book was published in Paris by P. Lethielleux, and the text is in French, with some uncut pages. There are 40 images in the text, as well as an image on the title page, one in the introduction, and one in the illustrator’s preface. 
The book measures 10 3/16 x 6 3/4 inches wide and was probably rebound in the late 1890’s or early 1900’s, and it is in very good condition, as are the wrapps bound in inside. The binding and pages are tight, the pages and images are very clean, with just hints of offset from the engravings here and there and faint soiling in a few of the margins, and overall a very attractive copy of this book by Berthier. 
WorldCat shows there are five copies of this title in Special Collections around the world, but they are basically in German, rather than in French, according to WorldCat: at the British Library in London, the University of Basel and Aargauer Kantonsbibliothek in Switzerland, Thuringer University in Jena, Germany, and the State Museum of Berlin. Another site is listed as having the book in its holdings, but when we checked, the book is not listed there anymore (Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Goren Bibliothek in Frankfurt). 
Recent sales and auction records for Berthier’s La Plus Ancienne Danse Macabre au Klingenthal indicate the book is an elusive title, with prices typically ranging from $300 to $400 for well-preserved first editions, a fine copy in publisher’s wrappers was recently listed through the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (ABAA) for $300, and that copy was noted as only the second identified in 25 years. We found two copies for Berthier’s edition listed on the rare book website we use for $120 and $647, and a paperback edition for $91, with waterstains on the front cover. 
 

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