Above and below are four versions of an image I generated using Google's free AI tool—i.e., via the Google browser. It used Nano Bannana to generate the images. My initial prompt was "Create an image in the style of Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dance of Death series, for the type of book collector depicted in Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff."
I refined the image by asking it to remove the top banner; then "[1] Remove the fools cap from the skeleton reaching for the book; [2] add a simple constellation symbol to the blank pages on book at bottom right (above the banner), such as those found in Hygini, Poeticon Astronomicon"
Of the four images, I like the most the second one above, and this last one below—which is closest to what I had in mind.
Although I was delighted with the images, I was most impressed by the persistence (?)—how well Nano Bannana maintained the integrity of the original image, while modifying small details. This is a huge improvement on what image generators could do only twelve months ago.
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UPDATE 27 July 2026. I reused my initial prompt (as set out above) as a staring point for
this new post on AI (not) eating antique books, and was so pleased with the resulting "Bibliomaniac versus Death" image that I thought I would add it here:
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