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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Holbein, by Beatrice Fortescue
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Holbein
+
+Author: Beatrice Fortescue
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2009 [EBook #29150]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOLBEIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau, Janine Lettau, Paul Dring,
+Clive Pickton, Joseph E. Loewenstein M.D. and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Illustration: _Hans Holbein the Younger_
+ _Coloured Chalks. Basel Museum_
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE BOOKS ON ART
+GENERAL EDITOR: CYRIL DAVENPORT
+
+
+
+
+HOLBEIN
+
+BY
+BEATRICE FORTESCUE
+
+WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+METHUEN & CO.
+36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+LONDON
+
+
+_First published in 1904_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HOLBEIN'S PERIOD, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY WORK
+
+  Historical epoch and antecedents--Special conditions and character
+  of early Christian art--Ideals and influence of the monk--Holbein's
+  relation to mediaeval schools--His father, uncle, and Augsburg
+  home--Probable dates for his birth and his father's death--Troubles
+  and dispersion of the Augsburg household--From Augsburg to Basel--His
+  brother Ambrose--Erasmus and the _Praise of Folly_; some erroneous
+  impressions of both--Erasmus and Holbein no Protestants at
+  heart--Holbein and the Bible--Illustrated Vernacular Bibles in
+  circulation before Luther and Holbein were born--Holbein's earliest
+  Basel oil-paintings--Direct and indirect education--Historical,
+  geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--Beginning of
+  his connection with the Burgomaster of Basel--Jacob Meyer zum
+  Hasen--Holbein's woodcuts--His studies from nature--Sudden visit
+  to Lucerne--Italian influence on his art--Work for the Burgomaster
+  of Lucerne                                                           1
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HOLBEIN BASILIENSIS (1519-1526)
+
+  _Holbein Basiliensis_--Enters the Painters' Guild--Bonifacius
+  Amerbach and his portrait--The Last Supper and its Judas--The so-called
+  "Fountain of Life" at Lisbon--Genius for design and symbolism in
+  architecture--Versatility, humour, fighting scenes--Holbein becomes a
+  citizen and marries--Basel in 1519--Froben's circle--Tremendous events
+  and issues of the time--Holbein's religious works--The Nativity and
+  Adoration at Freiburg--Hans Oberriedt--The Basel Passion in eight
+  panels--Passion Drawings--Christ in the tomb--Christ and Mary Magdalen
+  at the door of the sepulchre--Rathaus wall-paintings--Birth of
+  Holbein's eldest child--The Solothurn Madonna: its discovery and
+  rescue--Holbein's wife and her portraits--Suggested solutions of
+  some biographical enigmas--Title pages--Portraits of Erasmus--Journey
+  to France, probably to Lyons and Avignon--Publishers and pictures of
+  the so-called "Dance of Death"--Dorothea Offenburg as Venus and Lais
+  Corinthiaca--Triumph of the Protestant party--Holbein decides to
+  leave Basel for a time--The Meyer-Madonna of Darmstadt and Dresden,
+  and its portraits                                                     45
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHANCES AND CHANGES (1526-1530)
+
+ First visit to England--Sir Thomas More: his home and portraits--The
+ Windsor drawings--Bishop Fisher--Archbishop Warham--Bishop
+ Stokesley--Sir Henry Guildford and his portrait--Nicholas Kratzer--Sir
+ Bryan Tuke--Holbein's return to Basel--Portrait-group of his wife and
+ two eldest children; two versions--Holbein's children, and families
+ claiming descent from him--Iconoclastic fury--Ruined arts--Death of
+ Meyer zum Hasen--Another Meyer commissions the last paintings for
+ Basel--Return to England--Description of the Steelyard--Portraits of
+ its  members--George Gysze--Basel Council summons Holbein home--"The
+ Ambassadors" at the National Gallery; accepted identification--Coronation
+ of Queen Anne Boleyn--Lost paintings for the Guildhall of the Steelyard;
+ the Triumphs of Riches and Poverty--The great Morett portrait;
+ identifications--Holbein's industry and fertility--Designs for
+ metal-work and other drawings--Solomon and the Queen of Sheba         114
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PAINTER ROYAL (1536-1543)
+
+ Queen Jane Seymour--Death of Erasmus, and title-page portrait--The
+ Whitehall painting of Henry VIII.--Munich drawing of Henry VIII.--Birth
+ of an heir and the "Jane Seymour Cup"--Death of the Queen--Christina,
+ Duchess of Milan--Secret service for the King--Flying visit to Basel and
+ arrangements for a permanent return--Apprentices his son Philip at
+ Paris--Portrait of the Prince of Wales and the King's return gift--Anne
+ of Cleves--Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk--Catherine Howard--Lapse
+ of Holbein's Basel citizenship--Irregularities--Provision for wife
+ and children--Residence in London--Execution of Queen Catherine
+ Howard--Marriage of Catherine Parr--Dr. Chamber--Unfinished work
+ for the Barber-Surgeons' Hall--Death of Holbein--His will--Place of
+ burial--Holbein's genius: its true character and greatness            156
+
+CATALOGUE OF PRINCIPAL EXISTING WORKS                                  188
+
+REFERENCES                                                             189
+
+INDEX                                                                  199
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ 1. HOLBEIN      _Frontispiece_
+    Self Portrait. From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+ 2. "PROSY" AND "HANS" HOLBEIN                                          16
+    Drawn by their father, Hans Holbein the elder. Silver-point.
+    (Berlin Cabinet.)
+
+ 3. SCHOOLMASTER'S SIGNBOARD                                            26
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.)
+
+ 4. JACOB MEYER (ZUM HASEN)                                             31
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+ 5. DOROTHEA MEYER (nee KANNEGIESSER)                                   31
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+ 6. BONIFACIUS AMERBACH                                                 46
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.)
+
+ 7. FIGHT OF LANDSKNECHTE                                               58
+    Washed drawing. (Basel Museum.) From a Photograph in the
+    Rischgitz Collection.
+
+ 8. THE NATIVITY                                                        72
+    Oils. (University Chapel, Freiburg Cathedral.)
+    From a photograph by G. Roebke, Freiburg.
+
+ 9. THE PASSION                                                         74
+      I. GETHSEMANE.                    II. THE KISS OF JUDAS.
+    III. BEFORE PONTIUS PILATE.         IV. THE SCOURGING.
+      V. THE MOCKING.                   VI. THE WAY TO CALVARY.
+    VII. "IT IS FINISHED."            VIII. THE ENTOMBMENT.
+    Eight-panelled Altar-piece. (Basel Museum.)
+
+10. CHRIST IN THE GRAVE                                                 78
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.)
+
+11. THE RISEN CHRIST                                                    82
+    Oils. (Hampton Court Gallery.)
+
+12. THE SOLOTHURN, OR ZETTER'SCHE, MADONNA                              86
+    Oils. (Solothurn Museum.) From a photograph by
+    Braun, Clement, and Cie., Paris.
+
+13. UNNAMED PORTRAIT-STUDY; NOT CATALOGUED AS HOLBEIN'S                 94
+    Silver-point and Indian ink. (Louvre Collection. Believed
+    by the writer to be Holbein's drawing of his wife before
+    her first marriage, and the model for the Solothurn Madonna.)
+    From a photograph by Braun, Clement, and Cie., Paris.
+
+14. ERASMUS                                                             98
+    Oils. (The Louvre.) From a photograph by A. Giraudon, Paris.
+
+15. THE PLOUGHMAN; THE PRIEST                                          102
+    "Images of Death." Woodcut series.
+
+16. DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS THE GODDESS OF LOVE                          104
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+17. DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS LAIS CORINTHIACA                             106
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+18. THE MEYER-MADONNA                                                  109
+    Oils. (Grand Ducal Collection, Darmstadt.)
+    From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+19. THE MEYER-MADONNA                                                  109
+    (Later Version. Held by many to be a copy.) Oils.
+    (Dresden Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+20. SIR THOMAS MORE                                                    116
+    Chalks. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+21. JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER                                   118
+    Chalks. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+22. SIR HENRY GUILDFORD                                                120
+    Oils. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+23. NICHOLAS KRATZER                                                   122
+    Oils. (The Louvre.)
+
+24. SIR BRYAN TUKE                                                     124
+    Oils. (Munich Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+25. ELSBETH, HOLBEIN'S WIFE, WITH THEIR TWO ELDEST CHILDREN            126
+    Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+26. "BEHOLD TO OBEY IS BETTER THAN SACRIFICE." SAMUEL DENOUNCING SAUL  134
+    Washed drawing. (Basel Museum.)
+    From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
+
+27. JOeRG (OR GEORGE) GYZE                                              142
+    Oils. (Berlin Museum.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+28. "THE AMBASSADORS"                                                  146
+    Oils. (National Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+29. THE MORETT PORTRAIT                                                152
+    Oils. (Dresden Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+30. QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR                                                 158
+    Oils. (Vienna Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+31. KING HENRY VIII. AND HIS FATHER                                    160
+    Fragment of cartoon used for the Whitehall wall-painting.
+    (Duke of Devonshire's Collection.)
+
+32. KING HENRY VIII.                                                   162
+    (Life Study; probably for the Whitehall Painting.)
+    Chalks. (Munich Collection.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+33. DESIGN FOR THE "JANE SEYMOUR CUP"                                  164
+    (Bodleian Library.)
+
+34. CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN                             166
+    Oils. (National Gallery.) Lent by the Duke of Norfolk.
+
+35. ANNE OF CLEVES                                                     172
+    Oils. (The Louvre.) From a photograph by A. Giraudon, Paris.
+
+36. THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK                               174
+    Oils. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+37. CATHERINE HOWARD                                                   176
+    Chalk drawing. (Windsor Castle.)
+
+38. DR. CHAMBER                                                        180
+    Oils. (Vienna Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
+
+
+
+
+HOLBEIN[1]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HOLBEIN'S PERIOD, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY WORK
+
+  Historical epoch and antecedents--Special conditions and character
+  of early Christian art--Ideals and influence of the monk--Holbein's
+  relation to mediaeval schools--His father, uncle, and Augsburg
+  home--Probable dates for his birth and his father's death--Troubles
+  and dispersion of the Augsburg household--From Augsburg to Basel--His
+  brother Ambrose--Erasmus and the _Praise of Folly_; some erroneous
+  impressions of both--Erasmus and Holbein no Protestants at
+  heart--Holbein and the Bible--Illustrated vernacular Bibles in
+  circulation before Luther and Holbein were born--Holbein's earliest
+  Basel oil paintings--Direct and indirect education--Historical,
+  geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--Beginning of
+  his connection with the Burgomaster of Basel--Jacob Meyer zum
+  Hasen--Holbein's woodcuts--His studies from nature--Sudden visit to
+  Lucerne--Italian influence on his art--Work for the Burgomaster
+  of Lucerne.
+
+
+The eighty-three years stretching from 1461 to 1543--between the
+probable year of the elder Hans Holbein's birth and that in which the
+younger, the great Holbein, died--constitute one of those periods which
+rightly deserve the much-abused name of an Epoch. The Christian era of
+itself had known many: the Yellow-Danger of the fifth century making one
+hideous smear across Europe; the _Hic Jacet_ with which this same
+century entombed an Empire three continents could not content; the new
+impulse which Charlemagne and Alfred had given to Progress in the ninth
+century; the triumphant establishment of Papal Supremacy, that Napoleonic
+idea of Gregory VII.--_Sanctus Satanas_, of the eleventh, and grand
+architect in a vaster Roman Empire which still "humanly contends for
+glory"; and lastly, at the very threshold of the Holbeins, the invention
+of movable printing types about 1440, and the fall of Constantinople in
+1453, which combined to drive the prodigies and potencies of Greek
+genius through the world.
+
+Each of these had done its own special work for the advancement
+of man--as for that matter all things must, whether by help or
+helplessness. Not less than Elijah did the wretched priests of Baal
+serve those slow, sure, eternal Purposes, which include an Ahab and all
+the futile fury of his little life as the sun includes its "spots."
+
+But although the stream of History is one, and its every succeeding
+curve only an expansion of the first, there has probably been no century
+of our era when this stream has been so suddenly enlarged, or bent so
+sharply toward fresh constellations as in that of the Holbeins,--when
+Religion and Art, as well as Science, saw a New World upon its astonished
+horizon. So that we properly call it a transition period, and its
+representative men "transitional."
+
+Yet we shall never get near to these real men, to their real world, unless
+we can forget all about the pose of this or the other Zeitgeist--that tale
+
+  _Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
+   Signifying nothing._
+
+For we must keep constantly in mind that what we call the Middle Ages
+or--worse yet--the Dark Ages, made up the Yesterday of the Holbeins and
+was the flesh and blood transmitted to them as their own flesh and blood
+with all its living bonds toward the Old and all its living impulses
+toward the New.
+
+A now famous New Zealander is, we know, to sketch our own "mediaevalism"
+with contemptuous pity for its darkness. But until his day comes, our
+farthing-dips seem to make a gaudy illumination. And, meantime, we are
+alive; we walk about; we, too, can swell the chorus which the Initiated
+chant in every century with the same fond confidence: "We alone enjoy
+the Holy Light."
+
+The New is ever becoming old; the old ever changing into New. And if we
+ask why each waxes or wanes just when it does and as it does, there is,
+in the last analysis, no better answer than Aurora's explanation for
+chancing on the poets--
+
+  _Because the time was ripe._
+
+And the Holbein century is one of stupendous Transitions because the
+time was ripe; and not simply because printing was invented, or Greek
+scholars were driven from Constantinople to scatter abroad in Europe, or
+Ferdinand and Isabella wanted a direct route to Cathay, or Friar Martin
+nailed ninety-five Theses to the door of Wittenberg's church, and built
+himself thereby an everlasting name as Luther.
+
+And because the time was ripe for a new Art, even more than because this
+or that great painter entrained it, it also had its transition period,
+and Holbein is set down in manuals as a transitional painter. Teutonic,
+too; because all Christian art is either Byzantine or Italian or
+Teutonic in its type.
+
+When it first crept from the catacombs under the protection of the
+Constantinople Court it could but be Byzantine; that strange composite
+obtained by stripping the Greek "beast" of every pagan beauty and then
+decking it out with crude Oriental ornament. But who that prizes the
+peculiar product of that fanaticism would have had its cradle without
+this sleepless terror, lest for the whole world of classic heathendom
+it should lose the dear-bought soul of purely Christian ideals? Or who,
+remembering that in thus relentlessly sacrificing its entire heritage of
+pagan accumulation it put back the clock of Art to the Stone Age, and
+had to begin all over again in the helpless bewilderment of untaught
+childish effort,--could find twice ten centuries too long for the
+astounding feat it achieved? Ten centuries, after all, make but a
+marvellous short course betwixt the archaic compositions of the third
+century and the compositions of Giotto or Wilhelm Meister.
+
+A great deal of nonsense is talked about the "tyrannies" which the
+Monastic Age inflicted on Art. Of course, monasticism fostered fanaticism.
+It does not need the luminous genius that said it, to teach us that
+"whatever is necessary to what we make our sole object is sure, in some
+way or in some time or other, to become our master." And with the monk,
+the true monk in his day of usefulness, every knowledge and every art
+was good or bad according as it served monastic ideals. But it is absurd
+to say that the monk--_qua_ monk--"put the intellect in chains." The
+whole body of his oppression was not so paralysing as the iron little
+finger of Malherbe and his school of "classic" despots. To charge upon
+the monk the limitations of his crude thought and cruder methods is
+about as intelligent as it would be to fall foul of Shakespeare because
+boys played his women's parts.
+
+The springs of Helicon were the monk's also, as witness Tuotilo and
+Bernard of Clairvaux; but it was by the waters of Jordan that his
+miracles were wrought. As Johnson somewhere says of Watts, "every kind
+of knowledge was by the piety of his mind converted into theology." And
+for the rest,--by the labour of his hands, by his fasting from the
+things of the flesh, by his lofty faith--however erring or forgotten or
+betrayed, in individual cases,--by every impressive lesson of a hard
+life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century
+after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of
+every land to turn the desolate freedom of the wild ass into a smiling
+homestead and the savage Africa of his own heart into at least a better
+place. The marvel is that he could at the same time find room or energy
+to make his monastery also a laboratory, a library, and a studio. And
+yet he did.
+
+To say that he abhorred Greek ideals is to say that the shepherd abhors
+the wolf. His life was one long fight with the insidious poison of the
+Greek. He did not,--at any rate in his best days--believe at all in Art
+for Art's sake; and had far too intimate an acquaintance with the
+"natural man" to do him even justice. What he wanted was to do away with
+him.
+
+Yet with all its repellent features, it is to this unflinching
+exclusiveness of the monkish ideal that we owe one of the most exquisite
+blossoms on the stock of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--their
+innocent and appealing art; an art as original and as worthy of reverence,
+within its own peculiar province, as the masterpieces of Greece or
+Italy. You must turn from the beauty of Antinous to the beauty of, say,
+the Saint Veronica, among the works of the Cologne school at Munich,
+before you can estimate the Gulf of many things besides time which for
+ever divides the world of the one from the world of the other. And
+then you must essay to embody the visions of Patmos with a child's
+colour-box and brushes, before you can compare the achievements--the
+amazing achievements--of the monkish ideal with the achievements of
+classic paganism.
+
+With the school of Wilhelm Meister this tremendous revolution had
+accomplished itself; and solely through the indomitable will of the
+monk. The ideal of Greece had been to show how gods walk the earth. This
+Christian ideal was to show how devout men and women walk with God.
+Their ineffable heavenly faces look out from their golden world--
+
+  _Inviolate, unwearied,
+   Divinest, sweetest, best,_
+
+upon this far-off, far other world, where nothing is inviolate, and
+divinest things must come at last to tears and ashes.
+
+But the monk had had his day as well as his way. The so-called Gothic
+architecture had expressed its uttermost of aspiration and tenuity; and
+painting had fulfilled its utmost accommodation to the ever more slender
+wall-spaces and forms which this architecture necessitated. And once
+again, in the fifteenth century, the time was ripe for a new transition.
+Art was now to reveal the realities of this world, and to concern itself
+with Man among them. And just as the law of reaction flung the mind
+into religious revolt from the outworn dogmas and overgrown pretensions
+of the monkish ideal, so did it drive the healthy reaction of art into
+its own extravagances of protest. And we shall see how even a genius
+like Holbein's was unable to entirely free itself from this reactionary
+defect. For with all his astonishing powers, imaginative and technical,
+he never wholly overcame that defect of making his figures too short and
+too thick-set for grace, which amounted to a deformity in the full-length
+figures of his early work, and was due to his fierce revolt from the
+unnaturally elongated forms of an earlier period.
+
+Yet we should make a grave mistake if we were to regard Holbein as cut
+off by this reaction from all affinities with the monkish ideals of
+the Cologne school. On the contrary. We shall see, especially in his
+religious pictures, how many of those ideals had fed the very springs of
+his imagination and sunk deep into his art; only expressing themselves
+in his own symbolism and in forms unlike theirs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Augsburg Gallery there is a painting by Holbein's father, the
+"Basilica of St. Paul," in which there is a group introduced after the
+fashion of the period, which has a special biographical interest. This
+group, in the Baptism of St. Paul, is believed by many authorities to be
+a portrait-group of the painter himself,--Hans Holbein the Elder, and
+his two young sons, Ambrose (or Amprosy, as it was often written) and
+Johannes, or "Hanns." The portrait of the father is certainly like
+Holbein's own drawing of him in the Duke d'Aumale's Collection, which
+Sandrart engraved in his account of the younger Holbein; while the heads
+of the two boys are very like those which we shall find later in a
+drawing in the Berlin Gallery. From the pronounced way in which his
+father's hand rests on little Hans' head, while the left points him
+out,--and even his elder brother "Prosy" shows by his attitude the
+special notice to be taken of Hans,--it is clear that if this is a
+portrait-group either it was painted when the boys were actually older,
+or the younger had already given some astonishing proof of that precocity
+which his early works display; for in this group the younger boy cannot
+be more than eight or nine years old.
+
+Hans Holbein the Elder, who stands here with his long brown hair and
+beard falling over his fur gown, was a citizen of Augsburg, living for
+a while in the same street with the honoured Augsburg painter, Hans
+Burgkmair, and occasionally working with him on large commissions. That
+he was a native of Augsburg, and the son--as is generally believed--of
+"Michel Holbain" (Augsburg commonly spelt _Holbein_ with an _a_),
+leather-dresser--I myself cannot feel so sure as others do. There is no
+documentary evidence to prove that the Michael Holbein of Augsburg ever
+had a son, and there is both documentary and circumstantial evidence to
+prove that the descendants of Hans Holbein the Elder claimed a different
+origin. That a man was a "citizen," or burgher, of any town, of course
+proves nothing. It was a period when painters especially learned their
+trades and practised it in many centres. And this, when guilds were
+all-powerful and no one could either join one without taking citizenship
+with it, or pursue its calling in any given place without association
+with the guild of that place, often involved a series of citizenships.
+The elder Holbein was himself a burgher of Ulm at one time, if not of
+other cities in which he worked.
+
+But that Augsburg was his fixed home for the greater part of his life is
+certain; and the rate-books show that after the leather-dresser had
+disappeared from their register of residents in the retail business
+quarter of the city, in the neighbourhood of the Lech canals, Hans
+Holbein the Elder was, in 1494, a householder in this very place. For
+some years the name of "Sigmund, his brother," is bracketed with his;
+but about 1517 Sigmund Holbein established himself in Berne, where he
+accumulated a very respectable competence, which, at his death in 1540,
+he bequeathed to his "dear nephew, Hans Holbein, the painter," at that
+time a citizen of Basel. Sigmund also was a painter, but no unquestioned
+work of his is known.
+
+There is nothing to show who was the wife of Sigmund Holbein's elder
+brother, Hans. But by 1499 this elder Hans had either a child or
+children mentioned with him (_sein kind_, applying equally to one or
+more). In all probability this is the earliest discoverable record
+of Hans Holbein the Younger, and his elder brother Ambrose. In all
+probability, too, Hans was then about two years old, and "Prosy" a year
+or two older. At one time it was vaguely thought that the elder Hans had
+three sons; and Prosy, or "Brosie," as it was sometimes written, got
+converted into a "Bruno" Holbein. But no vestige of an actual Bruno is
+to be found. And as Ambrose Holbein's trail, whether in rate-books or
+art-records, utterly vanishes after 1519, it will be seen that for the
+most part of the younger Holbein's life he had no brother. Hence it is
+easy to understand how his uncle Sigmund's Will speaks only of "my dear
+nephew."
+
+Hans the elder lived far on in his younger son's life. His works attest
+that he had talents and ideals of no mean order. But I do not propose
+to enter here upon the vexed question as to how far the "Renaissance"
+characteristics of the later works attributed to his hand are his own or
+his son's. Learned and exhaustive arguments have by turns consigned the
+best of these works to the father, to the son, and back again to the
+father. In at least one instance of high authority the same writer has,
+at different periods, held a brief for both sides and for opposite
+opinions! In this connection, as on the battlefield of some of the
+son's greatest paintings, the single-minded student of Holbein may not
+unprofitably draw three conclusions from the copious literature on the
+subject:--First, that a working hypothesis is not of necessity the right
+one; secondly, that in the matter of his pronouncements the critical
+expert also may occasionally be regarded as
+
+   _Un animal qui s'habille, deshabille et babille toujours;_
+
+and thirdly, that in default of incontestable documentary proofs the
+modest "so far as I have been able to discover" of Holbein's first
+biographer, Van Mander, is a capital anchor to windward, and is at
+any rate preferable to driving forth upon the howling waters of
+Classification, like Constance upon the Sea of Greece, "Alle sterelesse,
+God wot."
+
+But my chief reason for not pursuing the Protean phantom of Holbein's
+Augsburg period is that,--apart from my own disagreement with many
+accepted views about the works it includes, and the utter lack of
+data or determining any position irrefutably,--it is comparatively
+unimportant to the purpose of this little book. For wherever the younger
+painter was born,--whether at Augsburg or Ulm or elsewhere,--and
+whatever I believe to be his rightful claim to such paintings as the St.
+Elizabeth and St. Barbara of the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich,
+Fame, like Van Mander, has rightly written him down Holbein
+_Basiliensis_.
+
+It is true that his father's brushes were his alphabet. It may be true,
+though I doubt it, that his father's teaching was his only technical
+school. But if he was, as to the last he gloried in being, the child of
+the Old Period, he was much more truly the immediate pupil of the Van
+Eycks than of his father's irresolute ideals; while Basel was his
+university. And whatever may have been his debt to those childish years
+when the little Iulus followed his father with trembling steps, his
+debt to Basel was immensely greater. The door-sill of Johann Froben's
+printing-house was the threshold of his earthly immortality.
+
+When he turned his back on the low-vaulted years of Augsburg, it was
+because for him also the time was ripe. The Old Period had cast his
+genius; the New was to expand it to new powers and purposes.
+
+               _Still, as the spiral grew,
+   He left the past year's dwelling for the new;
+   Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
+                Built up its idle door,
+   Stretch'd in his last-found home and knew the old no more._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may easily have been the elder Hans' continuous troubles, whether due
+to his fault or his misfortune it is idle now to inquire, which made his
+sons leave Augsburg. Certain it is that he but escaped from the clutches
+of one suit for debt after another in order to tumble into some fresh
+disaster of the sort, until his own brother Sigmund appears among his
+exasperated creditors. After 1524 Hans Holbein the Elder vanishes from
+the records. Probably, therefore, it was at about this date that he
+paid,--Heaven and himself only knowing how willingly,--the one debt
+which every man pays at the last.
+
+At all events his sons did leave Augsburg about 1514; or, at any rate,
+Hans did, since there is a naive little Virgin and Child in the Basel
+Museum, dated 1514, which must have been painted in the neighbourhood of
+Constance in this year,--probably for the village church where it was
+discovered. As everything points to the conclusion that Holbein was born
+in 1497, he would have been some seventeen years old at this time, and
+"Prosy" eighteen or nineteen. Substantially, therefore, they must have
+looked pretty much as in the drawing which their father had made of them
+three years before; that precious drawing in silver-point which is now
+in the Berlin Collection (Plate 2). Over the elder, still with the curly
+locks of the group in the "St. Paul Basilica," is written _Prosy_; over
+the younger, _Hanns_. The age of the latter, fourteen, may still be
+deciphered above his portrait, but that of Ambrose has quite vanished.
+Between the two is the family name, written in Augsburg fashion,
+Holbain. At the top of the sheet stands the year of the drawing, almost
+illegible, but believed to be 1511.
+
+ Illustration: PLATE 2
+
+ "PROSY" AND "HANNS" _HOLBAIN_
+ [_Drawn by their father, Hans Holbein the elder_]
+ _Silver-point. Berlin Cabinet_
+
+Of the elder brother all that is certainly known may be said here once
+for all. In 1517 he entered the Painters' Guild at Basel, where he is
+called "Ambrosius Holbein, citizen of Augsburg." He made a number of
+designs for wood-engraving, title-pages, and ornaments, for the printers
+of Basel--all of fair merit. He may also have worked in the studio of
+Hans Herbster, a Basel painter of considerable note. Herbster's portrait
+in oils, long held to be a fine work of the younger brother,--now that
+it has passed from the Earl of Northbrook's collection to that of the
+Basel Museum, is attributed to Ambrose Holbein. But little else is known
+of him; and after 1519, as has been said, the absence of any record of
+him among the living suggests that he died in that year.
+
+In the late summer of 1515 came that momentous trifle which has for ever
+linked the name of young Hans Holbein with that of Erasmus. Whether, as
+some say, the scholar gave him the order, or, as seems more likely, some
+friend of both had the copy, now in the Basel Museum, on the margins of
+which the lad drew his spirited pen-and-ink sketches,--it is on record
+that they were made before the end of December, and that Erasmus himself
+was delighted with their wit and vigour. And, in truth, they are
+exceedingly clever, both in the art with which a few strokes suggest a
+picture, and in that by which the picture emphasises every telling point
+in the satire. But a great deal too much has been built upon both the
+satire and the sketches; a great deal, also, falsely built upon them.
+
+They have been made to do duty, in default of all genuine proofs, as
+supports to the theory by which Protestant writers have claimed both
+Erasmus and Holbein as followers of Luther in their hearts, without
+sufficient courage or zeal to declare themselves such. I confess that,
+though myself no less ardent as a Protestant than as an admirer of
+Holbein, I cannot, for the life of me, see any justification for either
+the claim or its implied charge of timorousness.
+
+Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_--like so many a paradox started as a
+joke,--had no notion of being serious at all until it was seriously
+attacked. Some four years before its illustrations riveted the name of a
+stripling artist to that of the world-renowned scholar, Erasmus had
+fallen ill while a guest in the sunny Bucklersbury home where three tiny
+daughters and a baby son were the darlings of Sir Thomas More and his
+wife. To beguile the tedium of convalescence the invalid had scribbled
+off a jeu d'esprit, with its punning play on More's name, _Encomium
+Moriae_, in which every theme for laughter, in a far from squeamish day,
+was collected under that title. Read aloud to More and his friends, it
+was declared much too good to be limited to private circulation; and
+accordingly, with some revision and expansion, it was printed. That it
+scourged with its mockery those things in both Church and State which
+Erasmus and More and many another fervent Churchman hated,--such as the
+crying evils which called aloud for reformation in the highest places,
+and above all, that it lashed the detested friars whom the best churchmen
+most loathed,--these things were foregone conclusions in such a
+composition. But a laugh, even a satirical laugh, at the expense of
+excrescences or follies in one's camp, is a very far cry from going over
+to its foes. As a huge joke Erasmus wrote the _Praise of Folly_; as such
+More and all his circle lauded it; as such Froben reprinted it; and as
+such young Holbein pointed all its laughing gibes.
+
+And it was part and parcel of the joke that he launched his own sly
+arrow at the author himself. Erasmus could but laugh at the adroitness
+with which the young man from Augsburg had drawn a reverend scholar
+writing away at his desk, among the votaries of Folly, and written
+_Erasmus_ over his head. But it was hardly to be expected that he should
+altogether relish the witty implication, or the presumption of the
+unknown painter who had ventured to make it. Nor did he. Turning over a
+page he also contrived to turn the laugh yet once again, this time
+against the too-presuming artist. Finding, perhaps, the coarsest of the
+sketches, one in keeping with the "fat and splendid pig from the drove
+of Epicurus," he in his turn wrote the name of _Holbein_ above the
+wanton boor at his carousals. It was a reprisal not more delicate than
+the spirit with which subjects too sacred to have been named in the same
+breath with Folly,--the very words of our Lord Himself,--had been
+dragged into such company. But though it, too, was a joke, this little
+slap of wounded amour propre has found writers to draw from it an entire
+theory that Holbein led a life of debauchery!
+
+Yet even this feat of deduction is surpassed by that which argues that
+because Erasmus and Holbein lashed bad prelates and vicious monks with
+satire, therefore they detested the whole hierarchy of Rome and loathed
+all monks, good or bad. "Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched" is
+the oft-repeated cry; forgetting or ignoring the plain fact that Erasmus
+eyed the Lutheran egg with no little mistrust in its shell and with
+unequivocal disgust in its full-feathered development. "What connection
+have I with Luther," he writes some three years after Holbein illustrated
+Stultitia's worshippers, "or what recompense have I to expect from him
+that I should join with him to oppose the Church of Rome, which I take
+to be the true part of the Church Catholic, or to oppose the Roman
+Pontiff who is the head of the Catholic Church? I am not so impious as
+to dissent from the Church nor so ungrateful as to dissent from Leo,
+from whom I have received uncommon favour and indulgence."
+
+As to Holbein's "Protestant sympathies"--using the name for the whole
+Lutheran movement in which Protestantism had its rise,--the assertions
+are even less grounded in fact, if that be possible. If he had it not
+already in his heart, through Erasmus and Amerbach and Froben and More
+and every other great influence to which he yielded himself at all, he
+early acquired a deep and devout sense of the need of reform _within_
+the Church. Like all these lifelong friends, he wanted to see the Church
+of Rome return to her purer days and cast off the corruptions of a
+profligate idleness. Like them he couched his lance against the unworthy
+priest, the gluttonous or licentious monk, the wolves in sheep's clothing
+that were destroying the fold from within. Like them, as they re-echoed
+Colet--the saintly Dean of St. Paul's,--he passionately favoured the
+translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular and placing them in
+the hands, or at any rate bringing them to the familiar knowledge, of
+peasant as well as prelate. But surely one must know very little of the
+teachings of the stoutest Churchmen of Holbein's day and acquaintance
+not to know also that they encouraged if they did not plant these
+opinions in his mind.
+
+"Duerer's woodcuts and engravings, especially his various scenes from the
+Passion," writes even Woltmann, the biographer to whom every student of
+Holbein owes so grateful a debt, "had prepared the soil among the people
+for Luther's translation of the Bible. Holbein's pictures from the Old
+Testament followed in their wake, and helped forward the work." Yet it
+seems difficult to suppose that Woltmann could have been ignorant of
+the facts of the case. So far were Holbein's, or any other artist's,
+Bible illustrations or Bible pictures from arguing a "Lutheran" monopoly
+in the vernacular Bible, that in Germany alone there were fifteen
+translated and illustrated editions of the Bible before Luther's
+appeared; and of these fifteen some half-dozen were published before
+Luther was born. Quentell, at Cologne, for instance, published a famous
+translation with exceedingly good woodcuts in 1480,--three years before
+Luther's birth. While some nine years before Quentell's German
+translation, the Abbot Niccolo Malermi published his _Biblia Vulgare_ in
+the Italian vernacular, which went through twenty editions in less than
+a century: one of which,--brought out at Venice in 1490 by the Giunta
+Brothers,--was illustrated by woodcuts of the greatest beauty. So
+widespread was the demand for this "Malermi Bible" that another edition,
+with new illustrations of almost equal merit, was produced at Venice in
+1493, by the printer known as _Anima Mia_. All of these were vernacular
+Bibles; all illustrated; all widely known throughout Italy and Germany
+before Holbein was born or Luther was in his tenth year. And certainly
+it has not yet been suggested by the most rabid Protestantism that
+either these or any of the many other illustrated vernacular Bibles
+printed long before Luther's great translation,--a translation with a
+special claim to immortality because it may be said to have set the
+standard for modern German,--were anything but Roman Catholic Bibles.
+They were translated and illustrated in behalf of no doctrine which
+Protestantism does not hold in common with the Church of Rome.
+
+To lose hold of these things, to lose sight of the true attitude of
+Holbein in his Bible woodcuts and his "Images of Death," or of either
+Erasmus or Holbein in their satires on the flagrant abuses within their
+Church, and their unwavering devotion to that Church,--is to deliberately
+throw away the clue to the most vital qualities in the work of either,
+and to the whole course and character of Holbein himself, no less than
+to that of his lifelong friend and benefactor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1515 the young painter who had come to Basel to better his fortunes
+painted a table for Hans Baer's wedding. The bridegroom marched away,
+carrying the Basel colours, to the bloody field of Marignano (or
+Melegnano) in this same year, and never came back to sit with his
+smiling bride around Holbein's most amusing conceits--where "Saint
+Nobody" was depicted among all the catastrophes of which he is the
+scapegoat, and a few ordinary trifles--a letter, a pair of spectacles,
+etc.--were marvellously represented, as if dropped by chance above the
+painted decorations, so that people were always attempting to pick them
+up. But Hans Baer's sister had been the first wife of a certain brave
+comrade--Meyer "of the Hare," who did come back and played an important
+part in young Holbein's career. Long lost among forgotten rubbish, Hans
+Baer's table has been unearthed, and is now preserved in the town library
+at Zurich.
+
+But although Holbein had got his foot on the ladder of fame in this
+year's beginning of his connection with Froben, he was as yet very
+thankful to accept any commission, however humble. And as a human
+document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about
+the Schoolmaster's Signboard preserved by Bonifacius Amerbach, and now
+with his collection in the Basel Museum (Plate 3). It is a simple thing,
+with no pretension to a place among "works of art"--this bit of flotsam
+from 1516, when it was painted. Originally the two views, the Infant
+Class and the Adult Class, were on opposite sides of the sign; but they
+have been carefully split apart so as to be seen side by side. In the
+one is the quaint but usual Dame's School of the period; in the other
+the public is informed how the adults of Basel may retrieve the lack of
+such early opportunities. The inscription above each sets forth how
+whosoever wishes to do so can be taught to read and write correctly, and
+be furnished with all the essentials of a decent education at a very
+moderate cost; "children on the usual terms." And there is a delightful
+clause to say that "if anyone is too dull-witted to learn at all, no
+payment will be accepted, be it Burger or Apprentice, Wife or Maid."
+
+Somehow, looking at the young fellow at the right of the table, in the
+Adult Class, sitting facing the anxious schoolmaster, with his own brow
+all furrowed by the effort to follow him and his mouth doggedly set to
+succeed,--while the late, low sun of a summer afternoon streams in
+through the leaded window,--one muses on the chance that so may the young
+painter from Augsburg, now but nineteen, himself have sat upon this very
+bench and leaned across this very table, in a like determination to
+widen out his small store of book-learning. He could have had little
+opportunity to do so in the ever-shifting, bailiff-haunted home of his
+boyhood. And somewhere he certainly learned to write quite as well as
+even the average gentleman of his day; witness the notes on his
+drawings.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 3
+  SCHOOLMASTER'S SIGNBOARD
+  _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+Somewhere, too, and no later than these first Basel years, he acquired
+the power to read and appreciate even the niceties of Latin, though
+he probably could not have done more than make these out to his own
+satisfaction. All his work of illustration is too original, too
+spontaneous, too full of flashes of subtle personal sympathy with the
+text, to have emanated from an interpreter, or been dictated by another
+mind than his own. And this very Signboard may have paid for lessons
+which he could not otherwise afford. For if there is any force in
+circumstantial evidence it is certain that Holbein not only wrote,
+but read and pondered and thought for himself in these years when
+he doubtless had many more hours of leisure than he desired, from a
+financial standpoint.
+
+And the greatest pages of his autobiography, written with his brush,
+will be only so many childish rebuses if we forget what astounding pages
+of History and Argument were turned before him. In Augsburg he had seen
+the Emperor Maximilian riding in state more than once, and heard much
+talk about that Emperor's interests and schemes and fears; and of
+thrones and battlefields engaged with or against these. Augsburg was in
+closest ties of commerce with Venice; and the tides of many a tremendous
+issue of civilisation rolled to and fro through the gates of the Free
+Swabian City.
+
+Child and lad, his was a precocious intelligence; and it had been fed
+upon meat for strong men. He had heard of Alexander VI.'s colossal
+infamies, and those of Caesar Borgia as well; and of the kingdoms ranging
+to this or that standard after the death of Pope and Prince. He was nine
+years old then. Old enough, too, to drink in the wonderful hero-tales
+of one Christopher Columbus of Genoa, whose fame was running through
+the Whispering Gallery of Europe, while he himself lay dying at
+Valladolid--ill, heartbroken, poor, disgraced,--yet proudly confident
+that he had demonstrated, past all denial, the truth of his own
+conviction, and touched the shores of Cathay, sailing westward from
+Spain. Da Gama, Vespucci, Balboa, Magellan,--theirs were indeed names
+and deeds to set the heart of youth leaping, between its cradle and its
+twenty-fifth year.
+
+Holbein was twelve when Augsburg heard that England had a young king,
+whom it crowned as Henry VIII. He was setting out from his home, such as
+it was, to fight his own boyish battle of Life, when the news spread of
+Flodden's Field. None of these things would let such an one as he was
+rest content to apprehend them as a yokel. From either the honest dominie
+of the Signboard or some other, we may be sure he sought the means to
+read and digest them for himself. And if he learnt some smattering of
+the geography of the earth and the heavens after the crude notions of
+an older day, he could have done no other, at that time, in the most
+enlightened Universities. Ptolemy's _Geographia_ was still the text-book,
+and the so-called "Ptolemaic Theory" still the astronomical creed of
+scholars. Copernicus was, indeed, a man of forty when Holbein was
+painting this Signboard in 1516. But Copernicus was still interluding
+the active duties of Frauenburg's highly successful governor,
+tax-collector, judge, and vicar-general,--to say nothing of his
+brilliant essays on finance,--with those studies in his watch-tower
+which were to revolutionise the astronomical conceptions of twenty
+centuries and wheel the Earth around the Sun instead of the Sun around
+the Earth. But his system was not actually published until its author
+was on his death-bed, in the year of Holbein's own death. So that these
+stupendous new ideas were only the unpublished rumours and discussions
+of circles like that of Froben and Erasmus, when Holbein first entered
+it.
+
+But it is no insignificant sidelight on the history of this circle and
+this period to recall that the subversive theories of Copernicus,--far
+as even he was from anticipating how a Kepler and a Newton should one
+day shatter the "Crystalline Spheres," and relegate to the dustheap of
+antiquity the "Epicycles," to which he still clung,--had their only
+generous hearing from influential churchmen of Rome. Luther recoiled
+from them as the blasphemies of "an arrogant fool"; and even Melanchthon
+urged that they should be "suppressed by the secular arm." Nor let it be
+forgotten that these matters were never a far cry from those Basel
+printing-presses where the greatest master-printers were themselves
+thorough and eager scholars; "Men of Letters," in the noblest sense of
+the word. And the discussion of all these high concerns of history and
+letters was as much a part of the daily life surging around their
+printing-presses as the roar of the Rhine was in the air of Basel.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 4
+  JACOB MEYER (ZUM HASEN)
+  _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 5
+  DOROTHEA MEYER (_nee_ KANNEGIESSER)
+  _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+As has been said, the sister of that Hans Baer for whom Holbein painted
+the "St. Nobody" table had been the first wife, Magdalena Baer--a widow
+with one daughter, when she married him--of Jacob Meyer,[2] "of the
+Hare" (_zum Hasen_). Magdalena died in 1511, and about 1512 Meyer zum
+Hasen married Dorothea Kannegiesser. And now in 1516, a memorable year
+to Holbein on account of this influential patron, the young stranger was
+commissioned to paint the portraits of Meyer (Plate 4) and his second
+wife, Dorothea (Plate 5). These oil paintings, and the drawings for
+them, are now in the Basel Museum. And no one can examine them,
+remembering that the painter was but nineteen, without echoing the
+exclamation of a brilliant French writer: "Holbein ira beaucoup plus
+loin dans son art, mais deja il est superbe." These warm translucent
+browns are instinct with life and beauty.
+
+Against the rich Renaissance architecture and the blue of the sky-vista
+the massive head of Meyer and the blonde one of his young wife,--the
+latter so expressive of half-proud, half-shy consciousness,--stand out
+in wonderful vigour. From the scarlet cap on his thickly curling
+brown hair to the piece of money between his thumb and finger, the
+Burgomaster's picture is a virile and masterly portrait. And just as
+forcefully is the charm of his pretty wife,--with all her bravery
+of scarlet frock, gold embroidery, head-dress and chains,--her own
+individual charm. They are both as much themselves in this fine
+architectural setting as in their own good house "of the Hare" which
+adjoined the rising glories of the new Renaissance "Council Hall"
+(_Rathaus_) in which Meyer was to preside so often.
+
+In 1516 he had just been elected Mayor for the first time; but after
+this he had many consecutive re-elections in the alternate years which
+permitted this. For no burgomaster could hold office for two years in
+actual succession. Previous to being Mayor he had been an eminent
+personage as master of the guilds. And both before and after his
+mayoralty he was a distinguished soldier,--rising from ensign to captain
+in the Basel contingent which served at different times among the
+Auxiliaries of France and of the Pope.
+
+But what made this election of 1516 a civic epoch was that Meyer zum
+Hasen (there were many unrelated Meyers in Basel, and two among
+Holbein's patrons, who must be carefully distinguished according to the
+name of the house each occupied) was the first Burgomaster ever elected
+in this city from below the knightly rank. While the piece of money in his
+hand, far from fulfilling the absurd purpose sometimes suggested,--that
+of showing his claim to wealth!--marks another civic event of this year.
+For it was on the 10th of January, 1516, that the Emperor Maximilian had
+just issued the Charter which gave to Basel the right to mint her own
+gold coins. In the painting the pose of Meyer's right hand has been
+altered, and the position which Holbein originally gave it can still be
+made out. The monogram and date are on the background.
+
+In accordance with his invariable rule for portraits in oils, Holbein
+first made a careful drawing of each head on the same scale as the
+finished picture, carrying it out with great freedom but at the same
+time with astonishing care and finish. So that his studies for portraits
+are themselves works of art, sometimes invested with even more spirit
+than the oil painting, which was never made direct from the living
+model,--at any rate, until ready for the finishing touches. Drawn with
+a point which could give a line as bold or as almost impalpable as he
+wished, and modelled to the very texture of the surfaces, the carnations
+are so sufficiently indicated or rendered with red chalk as to serve
+every purpose. Sometimes notes are also added. Thus in the upper corner
+of the drawing for Meyer's head the artist has noted "eyebrows lighter
+than the hair" in his microscopic yet firm writing.
+
+With these fine portraits, painted as if united by the same architectural
+background, Holbein began a friendship of many years. After some four
+centuries it is not possible to produce written records of such ties
+except in occasional corroborative details. But neither is it possible
+to mistake the painted records of repeated commissions. While as the
+lifelong leader of the Catholic party in Basel, it was natural that
+Meyer zum Hasen should have much in common with a painter who all his
+life held firmly to his friendships with the most conspicuous champions
+of that party.
+
+Johann Froben was another of these; and from 1515 until Froben's death
+eleven years later Holbein had more and more to do for this printer.
+Occasionally, too, he drew for other Basel printers; but not often. The
+eighty-two sketches on the margins of that priceless copy of the _Praise
+of Folly_, which Basel preserves in her Museum, had been suited to their
+company. Admirable, though unequal, as are their merits, they _are_
+sketches, whose chief beauty is their happy spontaneity. Such things are
+among the trifles of art, and are not to be put into the scales at all
+with the finished perfection of his serious designs for wood engraving.
+These were drawn on the block; and even these cannot properly represent
+the drawing itself except when cut by some such master hand as his own.
+Since in preparing the design for printing the background is cut away,
+leaving the composition itself in lines of relief,--it follows that
+everything, so far as the reproduction is concerned, must depend upon
+the cleanness and delicacy of the actual cutting. A clouded eye, a
+fumbling touch, and the most ethereal idea becomes its travesty--the
+purest line debased. Hence the necessity for taking the knife into
+consideration in judging such work.
+
+This is not the place for any fraction of that hot debate which Kugler
+ironically styles "the great question of the sixteenth century"; the
+debate as to whether Holbein himself did or did not cut any of his own
+blocks. Assuredly he could do so. The exquisite adjustment of every
+line to its final purpose, the masterly understanding of the proper
+limitations and field of every effect, all prove that he had an unerring
+knowledge of the craft no less than of the art of Illustration. But in
+his day that craft, like every other, had its own guild; and it would
+not have been likely to tolerate any intrusion on its rights.
+
+We know, too, that those woodcuts which most attest Holbein's genius
+were engraved by that mysterious "Hans Luetzelburger, form-cutter, called
+Franck" (_Hans Luetzelburger, Formschnider, genannt Franck_), who still
+remains, after all the researches of enthusiastic admirers, a hand and a
+name, and beyond this--nothing. But it is when Holbein's designs are
+engraved with Luetzelburger's astonishingly beautiful cutting that we can
+appreciate how wonderful was the design itself. To compare these fairy
+pictures with the painter's large cartoons is to get some conception of
+the arc his powers described. It seems incredible that the same hand
+could hang an equal majesty on the wall of a tiny shell and on that of a
+king's palace, and with equal justness of eye. Yet it is done. He will
+ride a donkey or an elephant with the like mastery; but you will never
+find Holbein saddling the donkey with a howdah.
+
+It is not always possible to subscribe to Ruskin's flowing judgments;
+but I gratefully borrow the one with which he sums up thus, in a lecture
+on wood-engraving: Holbein does not give many gradations of light, the
+speaker says, "but not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he
+chooses. He is twenty times a stronger master of it than Rembrandt; but
+therefore he knows exactly when and how to use it, and that wood-engraving
+is not the proper means for it. The quantity of it which is needful for
+his story he will give, and that with an unrivalled subtlety."
+
+And the student of Holbein's art can but feel that Ruskin has here
+touched upon a characteristic of the painter's peculiar power in every
+phase of it;--the power to be Caesar within himself; to say to his hand,
+"thus far," to say to his fancy, "no farther." Those who have come to
+know Holbein something more than superficially, or as a mere maker of
+portraits, will smile at the dictum of some very recent "authority"
+which pronounces him wanting in imagination; or at the hasty conclusion
+that what he _would_ not, that he could not.
+
+He has given us, for instance, no animal paintings or landscapes pure
+and simple, or, at least, none such have come down to us. And yet what
+gems of landscape he has touched into his backgrounds here and there!
+And what drawings of animal life he made! There are two, for instance,
+in the Basel Museum which could not be surpassed; studies in silver-point
+and water-colours of lambs and a bat outstretched. No reproduction could
+give the exquisite texture of the bat's wings, the wandering red veins,
+the almost diaphanous membrane, the furry body,--a miracle of patience
+and softness. It is all purest Nature. Like Topsy one can but "'spec' it
+growed" rather than was created.
+
+And they are not only beautiful in themselves but full of living
+meanings. Many an hour the young painter enjoyed while he made such
+studies as his lambs on the pleasant slopes about Basel; the mountains
+scalloping the horizon, and all the sweet fresh winds vocal with
+tinkling bells or the chant of the deep-throated Rhine. Many of "the
+long, long thoughts" of youth,--those thoughts that ring like happy
+bells or sweep like rushing rivers, kept him company as he laid these
+delicate strokes and washes that seem to exhale the very breath of
+morning across four hundred years.
+
+In the next year after painting the portraits of Meyer and his wife
+there is a sudden break in the painter's story which has always puzzled
+his biographers. After such a brilliant start in Basel it is perplexing
+to find the young man, instead of proceeding to join the Painters' Guild
+and take the necessary citizenship, suddenly turn his back on all these
+encouragements and leave the town for a long absence and remote journeys.
+As will be seen when we come to consider the story of Holbein's married
+life, however, I have a theory that the influence which sent him south
+in such an unexpected fashion was apart from professional affairs.
+
+Whether this is a good shot or no, certain it is that he did now go far
+south,--as distances were in those days; and that, paying his way as he
+went by his brush, he went first to Lucerne, where the evidence goes to
+show that he apparently thought of settling instead of at Basel,--and
+then on beyond it. And it seems highly probable that at this time he
+pushed on over the Alps and made his way into Italy,--already the Mecca
+of every artist.
+
+Here he could not now, in 1517, have hoped to see either Bramante or
+Leonardo da Vinci in person. The former had died at Rome two years
+before; but, without getting even as far as Pavia, Milan could show some
+splendid monuments to his sojourn within her walls; characteristic
+examples of that architecture of the closing fifteenth century which
+Holbein loved as Bramante himself. Leonardo was now in France; but in
+the refectory of the Santa Maria Monastery was his immortal, though,
+alas! not imperishable, masterpiece--"The Last Supper." Time had not
+yet taught Leonardo, much less Holbein, the fleeting nature of mural
+oil-painting; the only so-called "fresco" painting which the latter ever
+attempted, so far as is known. But the great Supper was still glowing in
+all the splendour of its original painting, and would impress itself
+indelibly on an eye such as Holbein's. In more than one cathedral, too,
+as he wandered in such a holiday, he would have noted how Mantegna had
+made its architecture the background for his own individual genius.
+
+At any rate each of these, somehow and somewhere, set its own seal upon
+the reverent heart of Holbein at about this time. Whether through their
+original works or copies of them,--already familiar to Augsburg as
+well as Lucerne,--the lad sat humbly at the feet of both Leonardo and
+Mantegna. By the first, beside many a loftier lesson, he was confirmed
+and strengthened in his native respect for accurate studies of the living
+world around him. From the second he learned a still deeper scorn of
+"pretty" art. Yet though he sat at their feet, it was as no servile
+disciple. He would fain be taught by them; fain follow them in all
+humility and frankness. But it was in order to expand his own powers,
+not to surrender them; to speak his own thoughts the better, not theirs,
+nor another's.
+
+And, in any event, on such a journey Lucerne must come first. And that
+he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown
+by his having joined in this year 1517, the Guild of St. Luke, the
+Painters' Guild of Lucerne, then but newly organised. "Master Hans
+Holbein has given one Gulden," reads the old entry. Two other items of
+this visit give us glimpses of its flesh-and-blood realities, perhaps of
+its unrest. The first, that he also joined a local company of Archers,
+the Militia of his day, seems to bring his living footfall very close.
+A resonant, manly, wholesome footfall it is, too! This broad-shouldered
+young fellow is as ready to draw a good stout bow among mountain-marksmen
+as a lamb among its daffodils. The second item makes it still clearer
+that he had other elements as well as the pastoral in his blood. On the
+10th of December he got himself fined for his share in a street-scrimmage,
+where he would seem to have decidedly preferred the livelier to the
+"better part" of valour.
+
+And then he would appear to have shaken the dust, or more likely the
+snows, of Lucerne off his feet for the road to Italy, if not for Italy
+itself. Whatever his objective, he got, at any rate, well on toward the
+Pass of the St. Gothard. The scanty clues of such works as have remained
+on record prove that he reached Altdorf. But there the actual trail is
+altogether lost. If he spent the entire interval brush in hand, or
+if--as I believe--he treated himself to a bit of a holiday beyond the
+Alps, can be but a guess in the dark.
+
+By this time the New Year of 1518, then falling in March, could not have
+been far off, before or behind him. And in 1518 Holbein executed the
+commission which must have been the envy of every local artist. Jacob
+von Hertenstein, Burgomaster of Lucerne, had now got his fine new house
+ready for decoration; and it was to Holbein that he gave the splendid
+commission to decorate it to his fancy,--the interior as well as the
+facade.
+
+And a renowned triumph the painter made of it; a triumph such as,
+perhaps, no other artist north of Italy could then have equalled. It is
+idle now to dwell upon the religious subjects of one room, the genre
+paintings in another, the battle scenes of a third, and so on through
+those five famous rooms which were still in existence and fair
+preservation so late as 1824, but are now for ever lost; to say nothing
+of the painted Renaissance architecture and the historic legends which
+looked like solid realities when the facade was studied. But "Mizraim is
+become merchandise"; and all that is now left of what should have been a
+treasured and priceless heirloom is but a monument to the shame of that
+citizen, a banker, who could condemn such a thing to destruction as
+indifferently as if it had been a cowshed, and to the shame of the
+municipality which, at any cost, did not prevent it. Some hasty
+sketches--due to individual enterprise and a sense of the dignity of
+Holbein's fame--an original drawing for one of the facade-paintings,
+and a few fragments of the interior paintings, which still show
+themselves, by chance, in the banker's _stable wall_--these are all that
+remain to speak of what must have been the enthusiastic labour of the
+greater part of Holbein's twenty-first year!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HOLBEIN BASILIENSIS
+
+1519-1526
+
+  _Holbein Basiliensis_--Enters the Painters' Guild--Bonifacius Amerbach
+  and his portrait--The Last Supper and its Judas--The so-called
+  "Fountain of Life" at Lisbon--Genius for design and symbolism in
+  architecture--Versatility, humour, fighting scenes--Holbein becomes a
+  citizen and marries--Basel in 1519--Froben's circle--Tremendous events
+  and issues of the time--Holbein's religious works--The Nativity and
+  Adoration at Freiburg--Hans Oberriedt--The Basel Passion in eight
+  panels--Passion Drawings--Christ in the tomb--Christ and Mary Magdalen
+  at the door of the sepulchre--Rathaus wall-paintings--Birth of Holbein's
+  eldest child--The Solothurn Madonna: its discovery and rescue--Holbein's
+  wife and her portraits--Suggested solutions of some biographical
+  enigmas--Title pages--Portraits of Erasmus--Journey to France, probably
+  to Lyons and Avignon--Publishers and pictures of the so-called "Dance
+  of Death"--Dorothea Offenburg as Venus and Lais Corinthiaca--Triumph of
+  the Protestant party--Holbein decides to leave Basel for a time--The
+  Meyer-Madonna of Darmstadt and Dresden, and its portraits.
+
+
+And now it is 1519, and with it the true Hour of Holbein's destiny is
+striking. Take away the coming seven years and you will still have what
+Holbein is too often thought to be only--a great portrait-painter. No
+greater ever etched the soul of a man on his mask. His previous and his
+after achievements would still amply justify the honour of centuries.
+But add these seven years, from 1519 to 1526, and dull indeed must be
+the intelligence that cannot recognise the great Master, without
+qualification and in the light of any thoughtful comparison with the
+very greatest.
+
+His Basel career may be said to begin here; his earlier work furnishing
+the Prologue. On the 25th September, 1519, when he was about
+two-and-twenty, he joined the Basel Guild of Painters; that same "Guild
+of Heaven" (_Zunft zum Himmel_) which his brother Ambrose had joined two
+years earlier and from which he seems to have passed to the veritable
+guild of Heaven at about this latter date.
+
+And hardly is the ink dry upon the record of his membership than Holbein
+painted one of the most beautiful of his portraits--that of Bonifacius
+Amerbach (Plate 6). He stands beside a tree on which is hung an
+inscription. Behind him is Holbein's favourite early background,--the
+blue of the sky, here broken by the warm brown and green of the branch,
+and the faint glimpse of far-away mountains. Under his soft cap, with
+a cross for badge, his intensely gleaming blue eyes look out beneath
+grave brows. The lips are softly yet firmly set; the mouth framed by the
+sunny beard which repeats the red-brown of his hair. The black scholar's
+gown, with its trimming of black fur, discloses his rich damask doublet
+and white collar.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 6
+  BONIFACIUS AMERBACH
+ _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+Well may the inscription assert--above the signature, the name of the
+sitter and the date 14th October, 1519--
+
+  _"Though but a painted face I am not far removed from Life; but rather,
+   By truthful lines, the noble image of my Possessor.
+   As he accomplishes eight times three years, so faithfully in me also
+   Is Nature's work proclaimed by the work of Art."_
+
+For here in truth is a work of Nature which is no less a work of Art.
+
+This is the Amerbach who began and inspired his son Basilius (so named
+after Bonifacius's brother) to complete the Holbein Collection, which
+the Basel Museum bought long afterwards. And such was the love of
+both that they included, perhaps deliberately, much that has small
+probability of claim to be Holbein's work. They would reject nothing
+attributed to him; thinking a bushel of chaff well worth housing if it
+might yield one genuine grain. And in view of these expressive facts, it
+is hardly necessary to argue in behalf of the tradition that more than a
+conventional friendship bound the two young men together,--printer's son
+and painter's son, musician-scholar and scholar-painter, Churchman and
+Churchman; the one twenty-four, the other twenty-two.
+
+Bonifacius was the youngest of Johann Amerbach's three gifted sons. As
+all the world knows, Johann had been also a scholar as well as a printer,
+and great in both capacities. The most eminent scholars of his day
+gravitated as naturally to this noble personality as they afterwards did
+to that of his protege and successor, Johann Froben. He had educated his
+sons, too, to worthily continue his life-work and maintain his devout
+principles. Bonifacius was the darling of more than one heart not given
+to softness. He had been more the friend than the pupil of Ulrich Zasius
+at the University of Freiburg, before he went to Avignon to complete his
+legal studies under Alciat. Five years after this portrait was painted
+he became Professor of Law in the Basel University. "I am ready to die,"
+writes Erasmus of him, "when I shall have seen any young man purer or
+kinder or more sincere than this one."
+
+Very possibly it was for Bonifacius himself that Holbein painted his own
+portrait about this time (Plate 1, frontispiece). It is a worthy mate,
+at all events. In the Amerbach Catalogue it was simply called "Holbein's
+counterfeit, in dry colour" (_ein conterfehung Holbein's mit trocken
+farben_); the frame, too, was catalogued, though the painting was kept
+in a cabinet separately when the Basel Museum acquired it with the
+Collection.
+
+The vigour and finish of this portrait on vellum, done in crayons or
+body-colour, make it a gem of the first water. The drawing was done in
+black chalk, and the tints have been rubbed in with coloured crayons or
+given with the point where lines of colour were required. The work has
+the delicacy of a water-colour and the strength of oils. The broad,
+soft, red hat, though so fine a bit of colour, is clearly worn as part
+of a simple everyday habit. There is no suggestion of studying for
+effect, or even caring at all about it. He wears his hat pulled soberly
+down over his brown hair exactly as when he wore it thus about the
+business of the day. The plastic modelling of the puckered brow and
+the mobile mouth is beautifully indicated. The bluish tone left by the
+razor is just hinted. In his drab coat with its black velvet bands, with
+his shirt, on which the high lights have been applied, slightly open at
+the throat, Holbein himself seems to stand before one as in life.
+
+Among the "early works" of the Amerbach Catalogue there is one which
+shows strong traces of Leonardo's and even more of Mantegna's influence
+on him at this time. It is a Last Supper, painted in oils on wood. But
+it was so mutilated in the iconoclastic fury of 1529, and has been so
+cobbled, re-broken, re-set, and "restored" generally, that it can no
+longer be called Holbein's work without many reservations. There is also
+another Last Supper, one of a coarsely painted set on canvas, which
+is attributed to him on much more doubtful grounds, to judge by the
+composition and colouring. Myself I should be inclined to see the
+inferior hand of Ambrose, Hans the elder, or perhaps even Sigmund
+Holbein in these, if they are genuine Holbein works at all.
+
+But there are still to be seen the traces of his own hand and mind in
+the Last Supper in oils on wood. St. John's head must originally have
+been very beautiful; very manly, too,--dark with sudden anguish and
+recoil. There is a separate head of St. John, in oils, in the same
+collection, which shows how fixed was this noble originality of type in
+Holbein's conception of "the beloved apostle." But it is in Judas that
+the patient student will find, perhaps, most of Holbein's peculiar cast
+of thought, when once the initial repulsion is overcome.
+
+By a very natural arrangement he is brought into the immediate foreground
+and sits there, already isolated, already damned, in such a torment
+of body and soul as haunts the spectator who has had the courage to
+reconsider the dictum of authorities who call him "a Jew of frightful
+vulgarity." Frightful he may be; but it is a strange judgment which can
+find him vulgar. Unfortunately, the painting is no longer in a condition
+to justify reproduction; but such as study this yellow-robed, emaciated,
+shivering, fever-consumed Judas will, I venture to assert, find food for
+thought in it even under all the injuries the work has undergone.
+
+It is a demon-driven soul if ever there was one. He is in the very act
+of springing to his feet and rushing away anywhere, anywhere out of this
+Presence;--no more concerned about his money-bag than about the food he
+loathes. Thirty pieces of silver! If the priests have lied, if this is
+in very truth the Messiah his heart still half believes Him, will thirty
+pieces of silver buy his soul from the Avenger? Is there time still to
+escape? What if he break the promise given when he was over-persuaded in
+the market-place the other day? But did not the High Priest himself
+declare that this is Beelzebub in person,--this fair, false, dear,--oh!
+still too dear Illusion? Up! Let him be gone out of this!--from the
+sound of that Voice, from the sight of that Face, get the thing over and
+done, done--done one way or another! If God's work, as the priests
+swear, well and good. He will have earned the pity of God Himself. If
+the devil's, as his heart whispers, well, too! Let him take his price
+and buy himself a rope long enough to house his soul in any Hell, rather
+than sit on in this one! It is all painted, or was once; all written on
+that sunken cheek, that matted hair and clammy brow; in that cavernous
+socket, that eye of lurid despair; on the whole anatomy of a lost soul.
+The hand that did it was very young, very immature; but it had the youth
+and the immaturity of a Master.
+
+There is another and a very different work, an oil painting, in the
+Royal Collection at Lisbon, signed IOANNES HOLBEIN FECIT 1519, which,
+if by the younger Hans, would almost put the question as to whether
+the painter knew the landscapes of Italy, beyond doubt; so southern is
+the type of its background. The work, however, has been rejected by
+Woltmann, on the strength of an old photograph not quite perfect. He
+held the signature to be spurious, and attributed the picture to the
+school of Gerard David. And he gave to the work the name by which it is
+now generally styled in English works: "The Fountain of Life" (_Der
+Brunnen des Lebens_[3]). He did so from the inscription within the rim
+of the well immediately in the foreground; but a literal translation of
+this inscription, PVTEVS AQVARVM VIVENCIVM, is, I think, to be
+preferred: _The Well of Living Waters_.
+
+The majority of those competent to form a judgment in such matters are
+inclined to attribute the work to Hans Holbein the Elder, who did not
+die until some years later, and who made use of a very similar form of
+signature. And for myself I find it hard to see how anyone familiar
+with Hans the Younger could accept it as his work at any period of
+his career; least of all at the date given in the signature. So that
+equally whether Woltmann is right in believing the signature itself
+spurious, or those are right who hold it to be the genuine signature of
+Hans the Elder,--a more detailed description of the composition does not
+fall within the scope of this little volume. But the whole matter is
+most clearly set forth, and a very beautiful reproduction in colours
+given of the painting itself, in Herr Seeman's article upon it, which
+will be found in the appended List of References.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Considerably before 1519, as has been said, Holbein had begun to
+develop his special genius for Design, and to apply it to glass or
+window-paintings, as well as to metal and wood-engravings. The beautiful
+drawings, whether washed, or etched with the point, in chalks or Indian
+ink, of which examples may be seen in almost every great collection,
+private as well as public, that year after year were created by that
+fertile brain and ever more masterly hand, constitute an Art in
+themselves. And since so many (perhaps the greater number as well as the
+greater in subject) of his paintings have perished, it is chiefly in his
+drawings that the progression of his powers can be followed, or the
+plane and scope of his imagination recognised at all. There is seldom
+a date on them; but they will be found to date themselves pretty
+accurately by certain features. In his earliest, for instance, that
+defect of which mention has been made,--the short thick figures due
+to the energy of his rebound from Gothic attenuation is a grave fault.
+There is a Virgin and Child among his washed drawings for glass-paintings
+in the Basel Museum, for example, which, when you cut it off at the
+knees, is one of the most charming pictures of Mother and Child to be
+found in any painter's treatment of this subject. And behind them is a
+gem of landscape. Yet the whole, as it stands, is utterly marred by the
+Virgin's dwarfed limbs. But although Holbein never entirely overcame
+this fault, he did very greatly do so, as the years passed.
+
+His architectural settings, too, tended to greater simplicity in his
+later years. Yet this is not a safe guide. Some early designs have
+simple forms; some comparatively late ones, a very ornate architecture.
+For the truth is that these architectural backgrounds and settings
+remained, so long as his fancy had any free field for disporting itself,
+an integral part of his conception. But only as inseparable from the
+Symbolism, the under-tow, of his imagination. To my thinking, at any
+rate, they make a gravid mistake who look for "realism" in these things.
+
+His stately pillars and arches, his fluid forms of ornament, are not his
+idea of the actual surroundings of the characters he portrays, any more
+than they are your idea, or mine, of those surroundings. Is it to be
+supposed that he thought the dwellings of our Lord were palaces? Or
+that he could not paint a stable? Those who maintain that Holbein was a
+Realist in the modern sense of the word must reconcile as best they can
+the theory with the facts. But when we see the stage set with every
+stately circumstance,--the Babe amid the fading splendours of earthly
+palaces, our Lord mocked by matter as well as man,--I dare to think that
+we shall do well to cease from insisting on an adobe wall, and to study
+those "incongruous" circumstances to which the will and not the poverty
+of Holbein consents. We shall, at least, no longer be dull to "the tears
+of things" as he saw them.
+
+But it would be no less a mistake to think of Holbein as one without a
+sense of laughter as well. His drawings of open-mouthed peasants
+gossiping in a summer's nooning, or dancing in some uncouth frolic,--and
+still more his romping children, dancing children, and the chase of the
+fox running off with the goose,--all of these are full of boyish fun.
+Would that they could be given here without usurping the place of
+more important works! But that is impossible. And so, too, with the
+costume-figures of Basel, among which is the charming back view of a
+citizen's wife, with all the women bent far backward in the odd carriage
+that was then "the latest fashion" among them.
+
+He was particularly happy, also, in his drawings of the _Landsknechte_,
+those famous Mercenaries of "Blut und Eisen"; always ready to drink a
+good glass, and a-many; to love a good lass after the same liberal
+fashion; to troll a good song or fight a good fight; and all with equal
+zest. He had not mixed with these masterful gentry for nothing; nor they
+with him to wholly die. There are a number of drawings where they are
+engaged in combat, too, which show that Holbein's heart leapt to the
+music of sword and spear as blithely as does Scott's or Dumas's--as
+blithely as did the hearts of the _Reislaeufer_ themselves. Look at
+the mad rush, the hand-to-hand grapple, in a drawing of the Basel
+Collection, for instance (Plate 7). The blood-lust, the heroism, the
+savagery, the thrust, the oath, the dust-choked prayer, the forgotten
+breathing clay under the bloodstained foot; the very clash and din of
+the fray;--all is told with the brush. And yet not one unnecessary
+detail squandered. It is as if one watched it from some palpitating
+refuge, just near enough to see the forefront figures distinctly and
+to make out the interlocked hubbub and fury where the ranks have been
+broken through. It would be a great day for Art could we but chance
+upon some lost painting for which such a study had served its completed
+purpose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the 3rd of July, 1520, Holbein fulfilled what was then the
+requirement of almost every guild, and purchased his citizenship; a
+citizenship to reflect unfading honour on Basel, and of which she has
+ever been justly proud. And somewhere about the same time he married
+Elsbeth Schmidt, a tanner's widow, who had one child, Franz.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 7
+  FIGHT OF LANDSKNECHTE
+ _Washed Drawing. Basel Museum_
+
+For the past four or five years Basel had been steadily becoming more
+and more democratic. And at a period when its _elite_ were scholars and
+printers and civic officials of every origin,--when the illegitimate son
+of a Rotterdam doctor was the true prince, and Beatus Rhenanus, the
+grandson of a butcher, was his worthy second in the reverence of
+Basel,--the widow and son of a reputable tanner and a rising young
+artist, who had already the suffrages of the most influential citizens,
+would find no doors closed to them on the score of social disabilities.
+The friendship of such men as Erasmus, Froben, Bonifacius Amerbach,
+and the Mayor,--all conspicuous stars in the Church party,--would
+have ennobled a man of less genius than Holbein in the eyes of his
+fellow-citizens; and rightly. But as to the exact locality in which
+Holbein set up his first married roof-tree--that Bethel of sacred
+or saddest dreams--no documentary evidence has yet come to light.
+Circumstantial evidence, however, amounts to a strong probability in
+favour of the _Rheinhalde_ of Great-Basel.
+
+If there was an emblem peculiarly abhorrent to the Basilisk (the Device
+of Basel) it was the Crescent-and-star. But nothing could better serve
+to recall the rough outline of Basel in Holbein's day than this very
+emblem. As the Rhine suddenly swerves from its first wild rush westward
+and races away, northerly, to the German Ocean, it shapes the hollow of
+the crescent in which Little-Basel (_Klein-Basel_) nestled as the star;
+and, appropriately enough, since it was here that the Catholic's Star of
+Faith rallied when overcome across the river, where curved the crescent
+of Great-Basel (_Gross-Basel_). And the relative proportions of the two
+would be fairly enough represented by the symbols respectively used.
+
+Great-Basel's northern face was protected by the Rhine, while the stout
+city wall secured its convex curve. Of this wall the eastern horn was
+St. Alban's Gate; its north-west was St. John's Gate (_St. Johann
+Thor_); beside which stood the decaying Commandery of the Knights of
+Malta, which had contributed a large sum toward the expanded wall, in
+order to be included within it. And just as these spots still mark the
+horns of the old crescent, the _Spalen Thor_ shows where it had its
+greatest depth, midway between the other two.
+
+A straight line running due north-east from this Spalen-Thor would cross
+the big square of the Fish-market (_Fischmarktplatz_) pretty nearly as
+the uncovered stream of the Birsig, or "Little Birs," did before the
+quaint little bridge, which then united the two halves of the Fischmarkt,
+was absorbed in the paving over of stream and square before Holbein's
+day. This same straight line would of itself draw the "Old Bridge"
+(_Alte Bruecke_) with approximate exactness, the even then ancient bridge
+which centred the star of Klein-Basel to its crescent. And in the
+Historical Museum, where the Barefooted Friars worshipped then, we may
+still see the grotesque piece of clockwork, the wooden "Stammering King"
+(_Laellenkoenig_), that for centuries used hourly to roll great eyes and
+stick out its tongue a foot long across the river from the Gross-Basel
+end of the bridge. It is often said that this monster was set up as a
+public token of the hatred which the triumphant Protestantism of the
+south bank felt for the stubborn Catholicism of Klein-Basel. But the
+thing was a famous ancient joke before party feeling turned it into a
+gibe.
+
+Bonifacius Amerbach's home, the "Emperor's Seat" (_Kaiserstuhl_, now 23,
+Rheingasse), was in Klein-Basel. Johann Amerbach had bought it, near to
+his beloved friends, the Carthusians. In 1520 the good old man had slept
+for six years in the cloisters of the monastery; where to-day the
+children of the Orphan Asylum play above his grave.
+
+But all the conditions of Holbein's daily life would lead him to prefer
+Basel proper, and to choose the quarter in which he bought a home eight
+years later. This was then the western quarter of Gross-Basel, along the
+river-face of which ran the high southern and western bank of the Rhine,
+the _Rheinhalde_, now _St. Johann Vorstadt_. About where the present
+_Blumenrain_ ends stood the arch, or _Schwibbogen_. Further on still
+stood the "Gate of the Cross" (_Kreuzthor_), by the House of the Brothers
+of St. Anthony, the ancient _Kloesterli_ of Basel. Before the Commandery
+of St. John got themselves included within the city wall the Kreuzthor
+was its western gate. The whole district of _ze Crueze_, so called
+because its boundaries were crosses before towers replaced them, has
+however become absorbed in the St. Johann Vorstadt, while the Kreuzthor
+has disappeared altogether. The quarter was a favourite one with members
+of the Fishers' Guild and with decent folk of small mean
+s.
+
+As early as 1517 the Fishers' Company had extended itself so greatly as
+to become a notable institution of the Vorstadt, including many members
+from Klein-Basel also; while its military record was a proud one. But
+it was in this year, while Holbein was making his visit to Lucerne
+and beyond, that this guild took the more truly descriptive name
+which it bears to this day, that of the "Vorstadt Association"
+(_Vorstadtgesellschaft_). And to this association, which in after years
+gave him a famous banquet, Holbein, we know, belonged later on, if not
+now.
+
+Every day would take him to the Fischmarkt,--the great square humming
+with activity, crowded with inns, public-houses, shops, booths,
+dwelling-houses,--the trade mart of every nationality. The Cornmarkt
+near by, now the _Marktplatz_, with its almost finished Rathaus, was
+the centre of official civic life. When the great bell clanged on the
+Rathaus, and its flag was flung out, not only every professional
+soldier, but every guild and every male above fourteen, knew his
+appointed place at the wall, and took it. But every day, and all day,
+the Fischmarkt flung out its peaceful standards, or rallied men to
+this side or to that with the tocsin of its presses,--the old Amerbach
+printing-house "of the Settle" (_zum Sessel_), which was Johann Froben's
+home and printing-house in 1520.
+
+Morning after morning, and year upon year, Holbein turned his back upon
+St. Johannthor, and walked eastward along the Rheinhalde;--the river
+racing toward him on his left hand, the University rising in front of
+him beyond the bridge, and the delicate Cathedral towers beyond the
+University. For the Basel Minster was still the Cathedral of the great
+See of Basel. Passing the wall of the Dominican Cemetery, on which was
+painted the ancient Dance of Death with which his own after-creations
+were so often to be confused, Holbein must many a time have studied the
+famous old copy. For though the Dominican painting was then nearly a
+century old, it was a copy of a still older original in the Klein-Basel
+nunnery of _Klingenthal_, a community under Dominican direction.
+
+But he would pass another spot--one day to be of far more living
+importance to him. In 1520 it was a corn warehouse, known by the name of
+_ze Cruez_, which belonged to Adam Petri, the printer, who had inherited
+it from his uncle, the famous printer Johann Petri, by whose ingenious
+improvements the art of printing was so greatly facilitated. Two years
+later, in 1522, Froben bought this granary, ze Cruez, and converted it
+into the book-magazine which was known all over Europe as "Froben's
+Book-house." And in this latter year Adam Petri, greatly to Luther's
+disgust, pirated Luther's translation of the New Testament, which had
+appeared three months before.
+
+Holbein drew a superb title-page, ante-dated 1523, for this "enterprise"
+of Petri--the New Testament "now right faithfully rendered into
+German,"--with the symbols of the Evangelists at the four corners, the
+arms of Basel at the top, the device of the printer at the foot, and the
+noble figures of St. Paul and St. Peter on either side; figures which
+will bear comparison with Duerer's "Four Temperaments" of a later date.
+Later still he designed another striking title-page for Thomas Wolff's
+translation; and his beautiful title-pages and ornaments for Froben,
+with whom his connection was not a temporary matter such as these
+others, would need a volume to themselves.
+
+Holbein's only rival, if he could be called such, in work of this sort
+was the talented goldsmith, Urs Graf, who, as an exceedingly loose fish,
+lived most appropriately in the Fischmarkt in his own house near the old
+Birsig Bridge, when he was not in the lock-up for one or another of his
+constant brawls and scandals. But to compare the best work of both
+is to recognise a difference in kind as well as degree: the essential
+difference between even negligent genius and the most elaborate talent.
+High talent Urs Graf had unquestionably; though stamped,--I think,--with
+the lawless caprices of his own character. Holbein's every design has
+not only what Urs Graf lacked--that ordered imagination which is
+Style--but over and above all, the subtle expression of Power.
+
+Many a time, too, just where he would turn away from the Rhine for the
+business centre of Gross-Basel, the artist would make some little pause
+at the old "Flower" Inn (_zur Blume_), which gave its name to the
+Blumenplatz, and is still commemorated in the greatly extended Blumenrain
+of to-day. All the world now knows the famous hotel of "The Three
+Kings"; and where it reaches nearest to the Old Bridge stood the "Blume"
+of Holbein's time, even then the oldest of the Basel inns. This Blume,
+not to be confused with later inns of the same name, shared with its no
+less famous contemporary,--"The Stork," in the Fischmarkt,--the special
+patronage of the chief printers. Basilius Amerbach, for instance, the
+brother of Holbein's friend Bonifacius, lived at the Blume; and often
+the painter must have turned in for a friendly glass with him and a chat
+about Bonifacius, away at his law studies in Avignon.
+
+As for the Stork, its very rooms were named in remembrance of the envoys
+and merchant traders who flocked to it on all great occasions. There
+was a "Cologne Room," for instance, and a "Venetian Room," among many
+others. The men of Venice, indeed, had a particular affection for it.
+Here Holbein met with all nationalities, and learned much of the great
+centres of other countries. Here came all the Basel magnates and
+printers. And here, a few years later on, came that bizarre personage
+who was for a very brief time Basel's "town physician," the Paracelsus
+Theophrastus Bombastus to whom we owe our word _bombastic_. Holbein
+was on a visit to England during the latter's short tenure of office,
+when the combined scholarship and poverty of Oporinus made him the
+hack of Paracelsus and the victim of many a petty tyranny. At that time
+Oporinus,--the son of that Hans Herbster, painter, whose portrait is
+now attributed to Ambrose Holbein,--was glad to place his remarkable
+knowledge of Greek at Froben's service. He was not yet a printer, as
+later when Holbein drew a clever device for him. And neither he nor the
+painter could know that one day the daughter of Bonifacius Amerbach
+should marry him out of sheer pity for his unhappy old age,--somewhat as
+he himself, when but a lad of twenty, married an aged Xantippe from
+gratitude.
+
+But in 1520, when Holbein was just married, Oporinus was still a
+student and Bonifacius unmarried. Erasmus, too, did not permanently
+take up his home with Froben until the following year, and was now at
+Louvain. Yet what a true university was that little house _zum Sessel_
+(now 3, Todtengaesslein, the little lane where the old post-office stood)
+to an intelligence such as Holbein's! And what a circle was that of
+Froben's staff! From Froben himself, above whom Erasmus alone could
+tower in scholarship, down through every member to the youngest, and
+from such men as Gerard Lystrius on the one hand and the literally
+"Beatus" Rhenanus on the other, what things were not to be learned!
+
+And what discussions those were that drew each man to give of his best
+in the common talk! Venice sent news of the "unspeakable" Turk, whom she
+had such good cause to watch and dread. For fifty years his name had
+ceased to blanch the cheek of other nations; but now it was said, and
+said truly, that the dying Selim, "the Grim," had forged a thunderbolt
+which Suleyman II. would not be slow to hurl. No man could know the
+worst or dared predict the end, as to that Yellow Terror of Holbein's
+time. And closer still, to keen eyes, were the threats of the coming
+Peasant Terror. Wurtemberg had battened down the flames, it is true;
+but the deck of Europe was hot under foot with the passions that were
+soon to make the Turks' atrocities seem gentle in comparison.
+
+The death of Maximilian and the election of Charles V. were a year old
+now. But none knew better than the Basel printers how much the League
+of Swabia and the Swiss Confederation had weighed in the close contest
+of claims between those three strangely youthful competitors for the
+Emperor's crown;--Charles, but nineteen; Francis I., one-and-twenty;
+and Henry VIII., not twenty-five. Basel also knew that Charles had only
+bought his triumph by swearing to summon the Diet of Worms. All the
+more, therefore, was she intensely alive to the possible issues of the
+Arabian-Nights-Entertainment which had but just concluded on the dreary
+Calais flats when Holbein became one of Basel's citizens. Erasmus had
+come back full of it. Marco Polo's best wonders made but a dingy show
+beside the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," where in this June the two
+defeated candidates for imperial honours had kissed each other midway
+between the ruined moat of Guisnes and the rased battlements of Arde.
+
+Then, on top of this, came the rumours of the English King's undertaking
+to answer Luther's most formidable attack on Rome. It was in 1520, the
+year after his great disputation with Eck at Leipzig, that Luther
+published his cataclysmic addresses: "To the Christian Nobles of
+Germany" and "On the Babylonian Captivity,"--the latter of which itself
+contains the whole Protestant Reformation in embryo. "Would to God,"
+exclaimed Erasmus of it, "that he had followed my counsel and abstained
+from odious and seditious proceedings!" Bishop Tunstall, then in Worms,
+had also written of it:--"I pray God keep that book out of England!" But
+before the year was out "that book" had reached England, and Henry VIII.
+had sworn to annihilate its arguments and to triumphantly defend the
+dogmas of Rome. The eagerly-awaited "Defence" did not get printed,
+and would remain in Pope Leo's hands for a year yet. But Basel knew,
+through More and Erasmus,--whose canny smile probably discounted its
+critical quality,--pretty much its line of defence. Nor was Froben's
+circle one whit more surprised than its royal author when its immediate
+reward was that formal style and title--_Defender of the Faith_,--to
+which a few years more were to lend so different a significance.
+
+By this latter date Ulrich von Hutten had fled to Basel, only to find
+that his violent "heresies" had completely estranged Erasmus, and closed
+Froben's door, as well as all other Roman Catholic doors, against him
+for ever. He lodged, therefore, at the Blume until the Basel Council
+requested him to leave the town, a little before his death, in 1523. But
+in 1520 Hutten was still at Sickingen's fortress, digging with fierce
+ardour the impassable gulf between him and the band of friends and
+Churchmen among whom Holbein ever ranged himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the five lost works which Patin says Holbein painted, there was a
+"Nativity" and an "Adoration of the Kings." It is impossible now to say
+what resemblances, if any, existed between these and the same subjects,
+executed not much later, which are now in the University Chapel, Freiburg
+Minster. These latter are the only known works of Holbein that still
+hang in a sacred edifice. They were evidently designed to fold in upon a
+central altar-piece with an arched top, thus making, when open, the
+usual triptych; but the central painting has vanished. This large work
+was a gift to the Carthusian monastery in Klein-Basel; and the arms of
+the donor, Hans Oberriedt, are displayed below the Nativity, as well as
+the portraits of himself and his six sons. Below the corresponding right
+wing, the Adoration, are the arms of his wife and her portrait, with her
+four daughters.
+
+In both wings what I can only describe as the atmosphere of Infancy,--and
+a touching atmosphere it is too--is strengthened by keeping all the
+figures small and heightening this suggestion by contrast with a grandiose
+architecture. In both, too, the sacred scenes reveal themselves like
+visions unseen by the Oberriedt family, who face outward toward the
+altar and are supposed to be lighted by the actual lights of the church.
+The whole work must once have been a glorious creation, with its rich
+colours, its beautiful architectural forms, and its mingling of purest
+imagination with realism. What would one not give to see the lost work
+these wings covered?
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 8
+  THE NATIVITY
+ _Oils. University Chapel, Freiburg Cathedral_
+
+In the left wing, the Nativity (Plate 8), Holbein has remarkably
+anticipated the lighting of Correggio's famous masterpiece, not finished
+until years after this must have been painted, by the conditions of
+Oberriedt's history and Basel's as well. The Light that is to light the
+world lights up the scene with an exquisite enchanting softness,--yet
+so brilliantly that the very lights of heaven seem dimmed in comparison.
+The moon, in Holbein's deliberate audacity, seems but a disc as she bows
+her face, too, in worship. Shining by some compulsion of purest Nature,
+the divine radiance glows on the ecstatic Mother; and away above and
+beyond her--"How far that little candle shines," and shines, and shines
+again amid the shadows! It illumines the beautiful face of the Virgin,
+touches the reverent awe of St. Joseph, plays over marble arch and
+pillar, discovers the wondering shepherd peering from behind the pillar
+on the left, and irradiates the angel in the distance, hastening to
+carry the "glad tidings." The happy cherubs behind the Child rejoice
+in it; and as they spring forward one notices how Holbein has boldly
+discarded the conventional, and attached their pinions as if these were
+a natural development of the arm instead of a separate member.
+
+The same union of unfettered fancy symbolism and realism displays itself
+throughout the right wing,--where the Virgin is enthroned in front of
+crumbling palaces. The sun's rays form a great star, of such dazzling
+light that one of the attendants shades his eyes to look upward, and
+an old man with a noble head, wearing an ermine cape, presents his
+offering as the chief of the three kings; while a Moorish sovereign,
+dressed in white, makes a splendid figure as he waits to kneel with
+his gift, and his greyhound stands beside him. The colouring of both
+paintings must have had an extraordinary beauty when the painter laid
+down his brush.
+
+To carp at such conceptions because their architecture is as imaginative
+and as deeply symbolical as the action, is to demand that Holbein shall
+be someone else. These pictures, beyond the portraits below them, are
+the farthest possible from aiming at what we demand of Realism, though
+their own realism is astonishing. Holbein all too seldom sounds them,
+but when he does choose to stir only a joyous elation in the heart he
+rings a peal of silver bells. Here all is glad thanksgiving. The Divine
+has come into a sick and sorry world; and, behold, all is changed!
+Nothing sordid, nothing shabby, consists with the _meaning_ of this
+miracle. Therefore it is not here. All is transformed; all is a New
+Jerusalem--splendour, peace, ineffable and mysterious Beauty.
+
+With the dominance of the anti-Catholic party, which unseated Meyer
+zum Hasen in 1521, his friend Oberriedt also fell into trouble. And
+soon after Erasmus and Bonifacius Amerbach,--disgusted with the
+iconoclast fanaticism of 1528 and 1529,--took refuge in Catholic
+Freiburg-in-the-Breisgau, Oberriedt also left Basel for that city. He
+took these wings with him to save them from the destruction which
+probably overtook the central work. The latter was, perhaps, too large
+to conceal or get away. During the Thirty Years' War they were again
+removed, and safeguarded at Schaffhausen. And so great was their
+fame that they were twice expressly commanded to be brought before a
+sovereign; once to Munich, to be seen by Maximilian of Bavaria; and
+again to Ratisbon for the Emperor Ferdinand III. In 1798 they were
+looted by the French, and were only restored to Freiburg in 1808.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 9
+  THE PASSION
+ _Eight-panelled Altar-piece Oils. Basel Museum_
+     I _Gethsemane_
+    II _The Kiss of Judas_
+   III _Before Pontius Pilate_
+    IV _The Scourging_
+     V _The Mocking_
+    VI _The Way to Calvary_
+   VII _"It is finished"_
+  VIII _The Entombment_
+
+Another great religious picture, once no less renowned than Oberriedt's
+altar-paintings, has suffered a worse fate. This is the eight-panelled
+altar-piece of the Passion, now in the Basel Museum (Plate 9). So far
+back as is known it was preserved, probably after being hidden from the
+fury that attacked all church pictures, in the Rathaus. Maximilian I.,
+of Bavaria, the zealous collector of Duerer's works, offered almost any
+price for this altar-piece by Duerer's great contemporary. But Basel,
+unlike Nueremberg, was not to be bribed; and the world-famous painting
+remained to draw art-lovers from every country in Europe. Nor did the
+most competent judges fail to envy Basel her jewel, and to eulogise its
+perfections. Painters such as Sandrart, looking at it after it had
+survived a hundred and fifty years of vicissitude, could exclaim: "It is
+a work in which the utmost that our art is capable of may be found;
+yielding the palm to none, whether of Germany or Italy, and justly
+wearing the laurel-wreath among the works of former times."
+
+Alas! this laurel, too, has been filched from Holbein's fame. In 1771
+the altar-piece was consigned to the collection where it now is; and it
+was then decided to gild the gold and paint the lily. The work was
+subjected to one of those crude "restorations" which respect nothing
+save the frame. And no monarch will ever again compete for its possession.
+Red is over red and blue over blue, doubtless; but in place of Holbein's
+rich harmony a jangle of gaudy conflicting colours now sets one's teeth
+on edge. So that only in a photograph can one even enjoy the
+composition--all that is left of the Master.
+
+But here it can be seen with what art the painter has so combined
+eight separate and distinct pictures, each a gem, into one, by such a
+distribution and balance that the whole is as integral as a pearl. The
+scene on the Mount of Olives, which a great critic once pronounced
+worthy to compare with Correggio's work, is only to be surpassed by the
+Entombment. And in every scene--what freedom, action, verve! From the
+first to the last all passes with the swift step of Calamity, yet all
+with noble dignity.
+
+The Basel Museum possesses also a set of ten washed drawings in Indian
+ink,--scenes of the Passion designed for glass-painting,--which must be
+conned and conned again before one can "know" Holbein at all in his
+deepest moods. They are a great Testament, though they seem unbearably
+harsh at a superficial glance. But put aside your own ideas and humbly
+study the ideas of Holbein,--sure that they must be well worth the
+reverence of yours or mine,--and little by little you will be made free
+of that Underworld where Holbein's true self has its home; you will
+pierce its gloom and find its clue and understand its tongue. It is a
+small matter whether you and I find ourselves in sympathy with that
+world, or can never be acclimatised. The great matter, the only matter,
+is to understand it; to see in its skeletons something more than lively
+bones, in its graves something besides Horror.
+
+Without mastering the logical sequence of these ten drawings,--where
+scene by scene the Divine recedes before our eyes, and the Son of Man
+assumes more and more the whole burden of Sin and Death,--it is
+inevitable that the life-size painting of Christ in the Grave, also in
+the Basel Museum (Plate 10), should seem just a ghastly and "unpardonable"
+piece of realism. Realism of the most ghastly truthfulness, as to a
+corpse in the grave, it certainly is. But although it may be questioned
+whether such a picture should ever be painted, no one who looks through
+the form to the thought that shapes it would pronounce even this awful
+utterance "unpardonable."
+
+There have been those who could see in this dead Christ,--lying rigid in
+a green sarcophagus that throws over the waxen flesh the ghastly threat
+of that decay which would follow if no miracle intervened,--there have
+been those, I say, who could see in it only superb technique. And others
+see only the negation of all idealism, if not of all faith.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 10
+  CHRIST IN THE GRAVE
+ _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+Yet put this painting,--the acme of technical beauty as well as of
+ruthless realism,--at the close of the ten Passion drawings, and I
+venture to believe that the one coherent conception that runs through
+them all will legitimately find its conclusion here.
+
+Here He lies that surrendered Himself to the punishment of Sin and the
+penalty of Death--for all men and all time. His pale lips are set with
+the superhuman agony of the cry with which He paid the uttermost
+farthing of that bond. Man has died for man, martyrs for faith; here God
+has died unto Himself, for us. There has been no playing at death. All
+the pitiless terrors of the grave are here, with Him who for love of us
+has chosen to know Mortality "like at all points" with mortal men. What
+He bore for us, shall we shrink from so much as realising? The great
+eyes are fixed in a look whose penetrating, almost liquid sweetness
+not even the rigor of the final anguish could obliterate. Divine
+devotion,--devotion more than mortal,--still lingers in those sockets.
+The heart may well dilate before this sight; the soul fall on its knees.
+By each of those bloodstained steps, by the sting of this death, we have
+been paid for. Here, here only,--as Holbein saw it,--is the leverage the
+heathen philosopher vainly sighed for to move the world; God's
+leverage, Infinite Love.
+
+This is anything but a theological tangent. A great artist has
+bequeathed us his beliefs,--drawn and painted in many works, with every
+patient, virile, expressive power at his command. There has been enough
+and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. A little humility and a little study
+is in place, too. For the rest, let us not forget that this large
+painting was made for some altar; and that many a weeping penitent, many
+a devout heart, has been pierced with its message. On the edge of the
+stone coffin, which is tinted a warm green within, and lit by some
+opening at the foot, is the inscription in gold letters: "JESUS
+NAZARENUS REX JUDAEORUM." The stigmata are painted with unsparing truth.
+The work is dated 1521.
+
+There is in the Hampton Court Gallery a little painting which has only
+comparatively recently been recognised as Holbein's, but which forms the
+beautiful and fitting close of this set of religious pictures. As is the
+case with so many of his works, the critics are not unanimous upon it.
+But the authorities who have no doubts as to its being a genuine Holbein
+of this period are so weighty that I need not argue the point in
+support of my own convictions.
+
+In the Hampton Court Catalogue it is styled "Mary Magdalen at our Lord's
+Sepulchre," but I prefer to call it the Risen Christ (Plate 11). It must
+once have been supremely beautiful; for even now its ideal loveliness
+shines through all the evil fortunes which have once again defaced
+the handiwork of Holbein. The type of Christ, and indeed the work
+throughout, bears a marked resemblance to the eight-panelled Basel
+altar-piece.
+
+The painter has chosen the moment recorded in the twentieth chapter of
+St. John. In that early dawn, "when it was yet dark," Mary has brought
+spikenard in a marble cup, if not to anoint the sacred Dead at least to
+pour it on the threshold of the sealed tomb, with tears and prayers. She
+has fled to tell St. John and St. Peter of the sacrilege of the open
+tomb,--has followed them back, still mechanically clasping her useless
+spikenard,--has seen them go in where her trembling knees refused to
+follow, and then go homeward, as we can see them in the distance,
+arguing the almost incredible fact.
+
+Poor Mary has had no heart for discussion. She has stayed weeping by the
+empty grave until two pitying angels have appeared to recall her from
+despair, and she has "turned herself back,"--too frightened to stay for
+comfort. And then she has seen near her a Face, a Form, she was too
+dazed to recognise until the unforgettable Voice has thrilled through
+her, and she has flung herself forward with the old, instinctive cry,
+"Master!" to touch, to clasp that Hand, so dear, so familiar, so
+all-protecting, and find it a reality.
+
+It is this tremendous moment that Holbein has seized. And with what
+exquisite feeling for every detail of the scene, every great emotion!
+Had the painting been preserved, as it deserved to be, surely it too
+could claim a part of that laurel wreath which Sandrart averred could
+not be torn from the Basel altar-piece by any rival, whether Italian or
+German.
+
+  Illustration: Plate 11
+  THE RISEN CHRIST
+ _Oils. Hampton Court Gallery_
+
+The misty landscape, with the crosses of Golgotha and the eastern hills
+catching the first brightness of the new Day dawning over mortality; the
+broken clouds of night, scattered like the conquered horrors of the
+grave, and the illuminated tomb where Hope and Faith henceforth ask
+us why we weep; the hurrying agitation of St. Peter and the trusting
+serenity of St. John, expressed in every gesture; the dusky trees;
+Mary's quivering doubt and rapture, touched with some new awe; and
+the simple majesty with which our Lord stays that unconscious innocent
+presumption, _Touch me not_.
+
+What forbidding tenderness in that Face lighted by the grave He has
+passed through! What a subtle yet eloquent suggestion of the eternal
+difference, henceforth, between Love and love is in these mortal
+lineaments that have evermore resumed their divinity! No face, no type,
+no art, can ever realise Christ; yet when this little painting was first
+added to the great roll of Holbein _Basiliensis_, it must have gone as
+near to realising its subject as the colours of earth can go.
+
+But every man, happily for himself, has a material as well as an
+immaterial world with which he must be concerned. To transpose Bagehot's
+profound little saying,--Each man dines in a room apart, but we all go
+down to dinner together. And though Holbein knew the pinch of narrow
+means, he had no lack of good cheer as well as austere food in his art.
+
+On March 12th, 1521, the Great Council held its first meeting in the new
+Rathaus; and Meyer zum Hasen, who presided over it as Burgomaster,
+entrusted to his protege the enviable task of decorating the Council
+Chamber. Fifty-six years after Holbein's work was completed these
+wall-paintings were described as "representations of the noblest
+subjects--done by the German Apelles." By this title the painter was
+everywhere recognised throughout the greater part of his lifetime.
+
+In all, there would seem to have been six large pictures or set pieces;
+but two were not done until years later. One wall being too broken up by
+windows to be suitable, there remained three,--of which "the back wall"
+adjoining Meyer's house was not touched at this time. Ostensibly the
+reason was want of funds; but as a matter of fact the Protestant party
+(to anticipate this name), which grew strong enough to unseat Meyer
+before the year was out, was at this time indifferent to art when not
+positively inimical to it.
+
+Whether treating a facade or an interior it was Holbein's custom to make
+a flat wall-space assume the most solid-looking forms of Renaissance
+architecture. Iselin once said of a facade of Holbein's, that there was
+a dog painted on it so naturally that the dogs in the street would run
+up and bark at it. And so astounding was the realism with which he threw
+out balconies, and added windows, cornices, and statues, and the richest
+carvings, pillars, arches, and vistas of every sort, that no eye could
+credit them with illusion. Horses neighed in the courtyards, flowers
+bloomed in the gardens, dogs leaped beside master or mistress, and
+children played in the spacious balconies, or moved to and fro between
+the splendid marble pillars and the distant wall. To study the copies
+that remain of such works is to be astounded by their feats of
+perspective.
+
+Inside would be kindred illusions. Large pictures would seem to be
+actually taking place without, and beheld through beautifully carved
+archways or windows; while the apparent walls would have niches filled
+with superb marble statues and the ceiling be supported by pillars,
+behind which people walked and talked or leaned out to watch the chief
+scenes.
+
+And so it was with the Council Chamber. But nothing now remains of these
+works except fragments and a few drawings for the principal features. So
+far as can be judged, each wall had two large scenes; the four pictures
+of this period being chosen from the heroic legends of the _Gesta
+Romanorum_; the two painted later, from the Old Testament.
+
+But while these large works were going forward Holbein was busy with
+many others; private commissions for Froben, occasionally for other
+printers, and for altar-pieces or portraits. All through his life his
+industry and accomplishment left him small time for leisure or the
+dissipations of leisure. Nor is there any year of his life when his work
+does not attest a clear eye and a firm hand. These things are their own
+certificate of conduct; at any rate, of "worldly" conduct.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1522 occurred two important events in his life. His first child, the
+son he called Philip, was born; and he painted an altar-piece which is
+in some respects the most beautiful of his extant works. The latter--now
+in the Solothurn Museum, and therefore called the "Solothurn Madonna"
+(Plate 12)--has had one of the most extraordinary histories to be found
+in the records of art.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 12
+  THE SOLOTHURN, OR ZETTER'SCHE, MADONNA
+ _Oils. Solothurn Museum_
+
+The background of this picture,--a massive arch of grey sandstone
+supported by iron stanchions,--was evidently designed to suit the
+surrounding architecture of some grey-walled ancient structure. On a
+dais covered with a green carpet, patterned in white and red and
+emblazoned with the arms of the donor and his wife, sits the lovely
+Madonna with the Child held freely yet firmly in two of the most
+exquisite hands which even Holbein ever painted. Her dress is a rich
+rose-red; her symbolical mantle of universal Motherhood, or "Grace," is
+a most beautiful ultramarine, loaded in the shadows and like a sapphire
+in its lights. The flowing gold of her hair shimmers under its filmy
+veil, and the jewels in her gold crown flash below the great white
+pearls that tip its points. Where the sky-background approaches Mother
+and Child, its azure tone is lost in a pure effulgence of light; as if
+the very ether were suffused with the sense of the Divine.
+
+The Child is drawn and painted superbly. The carnations are exquisite;
+the gravity of infancy is not exaggerated, yet fittingly enforces the
+gesture of benediction. The left hand is turned outward in a movement so
+peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation
+and nature. The little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled
+sole a bit of inimitable painting. But perhaps most wonderful of all is
+the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the Child is the
+centre of interest as well as of the picture. How it is so, is Holbein's
+own secret.
+
+To right and left of the Virgin stand two fine types of spiritual and
+temporal authority. Behind and at her right, almost hidden by the
+amplitude of her mantle, kneels a poor wretch who is introduced here by
+some necessity of the commission itself, but is skilfully prevented from
+obtruding his needs on the serene beauty of the scene. Dropping gold
+into his alms-bowl with a hand effectively contrasted with his brown
+thumb, stands "the sinner's saint"--the good Bishop of Tours; while some
+other condition of the work has embroidered St. Martin's red mitre with
+the figure of St. Nicholas. There is one other striking circumstance
+about St. Martin; and that is that, although he is in the Virgin's
+presence, he wears the violet chasuble of an Intercessor. The chasuble
+is lined with red, and it and the rich vestments, on which scenes of
+the Passion are displayed, are the patient verisimilitude of ancient
+vestments. In St. Martin's gloved left hand is his crozier and the right
+glove, which he has drawn off to bestow his alms.
+
+Opposite to him stands the patron-saint of Solothurn,--St. Ursus, a
+hero of the Theban legend,--dressed from head to foot in a suit of
+magnificently painted armour. His left hand grasps his sword-hilt; his
+right supports the great red flag with its white cross. Nor is that flag
+of the year 1522 the least interesting detail of this work. With the
+crimson reflections of the flag streaking the cold gleams of his
+glittering armour, his stern dark face and the white plumes tossing
+to his shoulder, St. Ursus is a figure that may well leave historical
+accuracy to pedants. Below his foot are the initials H.H., and the date,
+1522; as if cut into the stone.
+
+This work was commissioned by Hans Gerster, for many years Town
+Archivist of Basel, in which capacity he had to convey important state
+papers to other councils with which that of Basel had negotiations. From
+this it came about that from the year when Basel entered the Swiss
+Confederation, in 1501, Gerster was almost as much at home in the "City
+of Ambassadors" as in his own, and the Dean or _Probst_ of the Solothurn
+Cathedral--the "Cathedral of St. Ursus and St. Victor"--became not only
+his spiritual director, but one of his most intimate friends. Many
+circumstances which cannot be given here make it pretty evident that in
+1522 Gerster, probably under the advice of the Probst, the Coadjutor
+Nicholas von Diesbach, made this picture an _expiatory_ offering for
+some secret sin of grave proportions. There are hints that point to
+treachery to the Basel troops, in the Imperial interests, sympathy with
+which finally cost him, as well as his friend Meyer zum Hasen, his
+official position. Gerster himself was not a native of Basel, although
+his wife, Barbara Guldenknopf, was.
+
+Be this as it may, it is apparently in direct connection with this
+confessed sin that "the sinner's saint," St. Martin of Tours, is chosen
+as Intercessor for Gerster, wearing the prescribed chasuble for this
+office. And it seems likely that the addition to his mitre of the figure
+of St. Nicholas was Gerster's wish, in order to specially associate the
+name-saint of his friend--Nicholas von Diesbach--with this intercession.
+It is assumed by those who have patiently unearthed these details of
+circumstantial evidence, that the beggar is introduced to mark the
+identity of the boundlessly charitable Bishop of Tours. But I venture to
+suggest still another reason: this is, that in the uplifted, pleading
+face of the mendicant, whose expression of appeal and humility is a
+striking bit of realism in these ideal surroundings, we may have the
+actual portrait of the donor, Hans Gerster himself. That this should be
+so would be in strict accord with the methods of the period. There is a
+striking parallel which will occur to all who are familiar with the St.
+Elizabeth in the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich. Here the undoubted
+portrait of Hans Holbein the elder is seen as the beggar in the
+background.
+
+It is, as has been said, a marvellous story by which this glorious
+painting,--in which the introduction of the patron-saint of Solothurn
+proves that it was created for one of her own altars,--was completely
+lost to her, and to the very histories of Art, and then returned to the
+city for which it was originally destined; all by a chain of seemingly
+unrelated accidents. But only the skeleton of that story can be given
+here.[4]
+
+In all probability this Madonna was executed for the altar of the ancient
+Lady Chapel of the Solothurn Cathedral. A hundred and twenty-six years
+after it was painted, this chapel was pulled down, to be replaced by a
+totally different style of architecture; and as the picture was then
+smoke-stained and "old-fashioned" it would in all likelihood drop into
+some lumber-room. At all events, it must have become the property of the
+Cathedral choirmaster,--one Hartmann,--after another five-and-thirty
+years. For at this time he built, and soon after endowed, the little
+village church of Allerheiligen, on the outskirts of the industrial town
+of Grenchen, which lies at the southern foot of the Jura.
+
+_Facilis descensus!_ Another turn of the centuries' wheel and the gift
+of this chapel's founder was once again thought unworthy of the altar to
+which it had been presented. When Herr Zetter of Solothurn first saw it
+in the queer little Allerheiligen chapel, it hung high up on the choir
+wall; blackened, worm-eaten, without a frame, suspended by a string
+passed through two holes which had been bored through the painted panel
+itself. Yet his acute eye was greatly interested by it. And when, during
+an official visit in 1864, he heard that the chapel was undergoing a
+drastic renovation, he was concerned for the fate of the discoloured old
+painting. At first it could not be discovered at all. Finally he found
+it, face downward, spotted all over with whitewash, under the rough
+boards that served for the workmen's platform. A few hours later and it,
+too, would have been irrevocably gone; carted away with the "old
+rubbish"!
+
+He examined it, made out the signature, knew that this might mean either
+any one of a number of painters who used it, or a clumsy copy or
+forgery, yet had the courage of his conviction that it was Holbein's
+genuine work. He bought it of the responsible authority, who was glad
+to be rid of four despised paintings, for the cost of all the new
+decorations. He had expert opinion, which utterly discouraged his
+belief; but stuck to it, took the risks of having it three long years
+(so rotten was its whole condition) under repairs which might at any
+moment collapse with it, yet leave their tremendous expenses behind to
+be settled just the same; and finally found himself the possessor of a
+perfectly restored chef-d'oeuvre of Holbein's brush, which, from the
+first, Herr Zetter devoted to the Museum (now a fine new one) of
+Solothurn.
+
+To-day this work, which some forty years ago no one dreamed had ever
+existed, smiles in all the beauty of its first painting; a monument to
+the insight and generous enthusiasm of the gentleman whose name is rightly
+connected with its own in its official title--"The Zetter-Madonna of
+Solothurn." And it smiles with Holbein's own undebased handiwork
+throughout. _Pace_ Woltmann's blunder,--its network of fine cracks, even
+over the Virgin's face, attests that it has suffered no over-painting.
+The work has been mounted on a solid back, the greatest fissures and the
+holes filled up to match their surroundings, the stains and defacements
+of neglect cleared away, and the triumph is complete. It might well be
+the "swan song" of a veteran artist at such work. Whatever the mistakes
+of Eigener's career, the restoration of the Solothurn Madonna was a
+flawless achievement for himself and his associates.
+
+This work, too, is the most precious of all that have come down to us of
+Holbein's imaginative compositions, from the fact that his first-born,
+Philip, who was born about 1522, was the model for the Child, and that a
+portrait of Elsbeth, his wife, served as a study for the Virgin. This
+portrait is an unnamed and unsigned drawing in silver-point and Indian
+ink, heightened with touches of red chalk, now in the Louvre Collection.
+(Plate 13.)
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 13
+  UNNAMED PORTRAIT-STUDY: NOT CATALOGUED AS HOLBEIN'S
+ _Silver-point and Indian-ink. Louvre Collection_
+ _Believed by the writer to be Holbein's drawing of
+  his wife before her first marriage, and the model
+  for the Solothurn Madonna_
+
+That this is a portrait of Holbein's wife any careful comparison with
+her portrait at Basel must establish. Feature for feature, allowing for
+the changes of sufficient years, the two faces are one and the same. The
+very line of the shoulder, setting of the head, and even the outline of
+the fashion in which the low dress is cut, is alike in both. And equally
+unmistakable is the relation between this Louvre drawing and the
+Madonna of Solothurn.
+
+Yet I am unable to accept Woltmann's theory that the drawing was made in
+1522 "for" the Virgin. He assumes that the lettering which borders the
+bodice in this drawing--ALS. IN. ERN. ALS. IN....--and the braids in
+which the hair is worn are simply some "fancy" dress. But surely if ever
+hair bore the stamp of unstudied, even ugly custom, it does so here.
+Then, too, Woltmann himself, as are all who adopt this explanation, is
+unable to reconcile the oldest age which can be assigned to this sitter
+with the youngest that can be assumed for the Basel painting of 1529
+upon a hypothesis of only seven years' interval. Temperament and trouble
+can do much in seven years; but not so much as this. I say _temperament_
+advisedly; because all the evidence of Holbein's life substantiates
+the assertion of Van Mander, who had it from Holbein's own circle of
+contemporaries,--that the painter's life was made wretched by her
+violent temper. We shall find him far from blameless in later years; but
+though it may not excuse him, his unhappy home must largely explain his
+alienation.
+
+Yet that it can explain such an alteration as that between the Louvre
+drawing and the Basel portrait I do not believe. Nor could I persuade
+myself either that any married woman of the sixteenth century wore her
+hair in that most exclusive and invariable of Teuton symbols--"maiden"
+plaits;--or that any husband ever thought it necessary to advertise upon
+a picture of his wife that he held her "in all honour."
+
+Myself, I must believe, then, that this portrait was made years before
+1522; probably in the young painter's first months in Basel, in 1515;
+and thus some fourteen years before the Basel group of 1529 was painted.
+It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them
+was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and
+the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of
+course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved.
+But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation,
+and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child,
+could easily have run a natural course between 1515 and their marriage,
+somewhere about 1520.
+
+As for the inscription,--it is a detail that Woltmann thinks represents
+a repetition of the one phrase, and that I imagine to have suggested
+what for some reason Holbein did not wish to proclaim:--"In all honour.
+[In all love.]" But nothing can shake my conviction that in it we hear
+the faint far-off echoes from some belfry in Holbein's own city of Is.
+The realities of that chime are buried,--whether well or ill,--four
+hundred years deep in the seas that roll over that submerged world of
+his youth and passion. But living emotion, we may be sure, went to the
+writing and the treasuring of this pledge to Elsbeth or himself; a
+pledge redeemed when she became his wife.
+
+Thus for the altar-piece of 1522 there would be this portrait of Elsbeth
+in her girlhood ready to his hand. But even so, see how he has idealised
+it, made a new creature of it, all compact of exquisite ideals! He has
+eliminated the subtle sensuousness which has its own allure in the
+drawing. Every trait is refined, purified, vivified, raised to another
+plane of character. Genius has put the inferior elements into its
+retort, and transmuted them to some heavenly metal far enough from
+Holbein's home-life.
+
+Throughout all these years, as has been said, he was busy for the
+printers also. In 1522 he drew the noble title-page for Petri's edition
+of Luther's New Testament, with the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul
+at either side, of which mention has been made. And in Thomas Wolff's
+edition of 1523 there is a series of his designs. His alphabets, borders,
+illustrations of all sorts, continued to enrich the Basel press from
+this date, and were often borrowed by printers in other cities. In 1523
+there came to Basel that masterly wood-cutter who has been already
+referred to,--Hans Luetzelburger. And from this time on, therefore,
+Holbein's designs may be seen in their true beauty.
+
+He had painted, besides portraits of Froben and others, at least three
+portraits of Erasmus by 1524. For in June of this year the latter writes
+to his friend Pirkheimer, at Nuernberg, to say that he has sent two of
+these portraits by the "most accomplished painter" to England; while the
+artist himself, he adds, has conveyed still a third to France.
+
+The smaller of the two sent to England, two-thirds the size of life, is
+probably the one now in the Louvre (Plate 14). It is a masterpiece of
+penetration and technique. Erasmus is here seen in the most unaffected
+simplicity of dress and pose; in profile against a dark-green tapestry
+patterned with light green, and red and white flowers. The usual
+scholar's cap covers his grey hair. The blue-grey eyes are glancing down
+at his writing. Studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the
+Louvre drawings. The very Self of the man--the lean, strong, _thinking_
+countenance,--the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing
+out on his lips,--is alive here by some necromancy of art.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 14
+  ERASMUS
+ _Oils. The Louvre_
+
+The portrait now in the Basel Museum, in oils on paper, afterwards
+fastened to the panel, is in all likelihood that third portrait which
+Erasmus told Pirkheimer the painter himself had taken to France. So
+that Holbein must have painted it for, and carried it to, Bonifacius
+Amerbach, who was then, in 1524, finishing a renewed course of study at
+Avignon. Probably it was during this visit to France, too, that he made
+the spirited sketches of monuments at Bourges. In that case it would
+seem that he struck across by way of Dijon to the Cathedral City, in
+connection with some matter not now to be discovered, and from there
+took the great highway to Avignon by way of Lyons; carrying with him the
+gift of his sketches from the monuments of Duke Jehan of Berri and his
+wife. These were treasured in Amerbach's collection.
+
+Whatever the reason that sent him abroad on this journey,--whether
+unhappiness at home or the troubled state of public affairs during the
+Peasants' War of 1524 and 1525,--or whether he simply had business in
+France which delayed him there for a year or two--at all events, all
+records fail as to his wanderings or work in this long interval. And
+many circumstances go to show that it was at this time that he entered
+upon the immortal work which was published at Lyons, by the Trechsel
+Brothers, many years later;--those "Images of Death" which have borrowed
+the old name in popular parlance, and are generally called Holbein's
+"Dance" of Death.
+
+Just why the Trechsels did not issue the publication until 1538 it is
+impossible to say. As one of the largest Catholic publishing-houses of
+France, they would be governed by circumstances entirely outside of
+Holbein's history or control. But more than one circumstance presses the
+conclusion that the designs were made between 1523 and 1526. And there
+is a certain amount of evidence for the belief that they may have been
+first struck off in Germany, possibly by some one of the multifarious
+connections of the Trechsels, as early as 1527. But this is a large
+subject, not to be dealt with as an aside.
+
+All the world knows these wonderful designs; their beauty of line, power
+of expression, and sparkling fancy. Among them all there are only two
+where Death is a figure of violence; and but one,--the knight, transfixed
+by one fell, malignant stroke from behind--where Death exhibits positive
+ferocity. In both of these,--the Count, beaten down by his own great
+coat-of-arms, is the other,--it is easy to read a reflection of the
+actualities of the Peasants' War then raging.
+
+For the rest, the grim skeleton wears no unkind smile; though that he
+_is_ Death makes it look a ghastly-enough pleasantry. But toward the
+poor and the aged he is better than merry; he is kind. His fleshless
+hand is raised in benediction over the aged woman; and the bent
+patriarch leans on his arm, listening to Death's attendant playing the
+sweet old melodies of Long-Ago as he stands on the verge of the great
+Silence.
+
+But where a selection must be made, there are two drawings with their
+own special claim to consideration. These are the Ploughman and the
+Priest (Plates 14 and 15). The former has been cited by Ruskin as an
+example of a perfect design for wood-engraving; but even higher than its
+art, to my thinking, is its feeling. To the labourer of this sort,--poor,
+patient, toilworn,--Holbein's heart is very gentle. And so is Death--who
+muffles up his harsh features and speeds the heavy plough with a step
+like that of Hope. And at the end of the long, last uphill furrow, see
+how the setting sun shines on "God's Acre!"
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 15
+  THE PLOUGHMAN
+ _"Images of Death" Woodcut series_
+
+  THE PRIEST
+ _"Images of Death" Woodcut series_
+
+The second selection, the Priest, is its own proof, if any were needed,
+of how sharply Holbein distinguished cloth from cloth. In it, nearly a
+decade after he had pointed Erasmus's satire on the unworthy prelate or
+the unclean friar, may plainly be read that reverence for the true
+priest which Holbein shared with all his best friends. In the quaint,
+quiet street this solemn procession is too familiar a sight to draw any
+spectator from the hearth where the fire of the Living is blazing
+so cheerily. The good Father, very lovingly drawn, casts his kind
+glance around as he passes on his Office with the veiled Pyx carried
+reverently. Before him goes Death, his Server, hastening the last mercy
+with eager steps. Under his arm is the tiny glass that has measured the
+whole of a mortality; the sands have lost their moving charm, and all
+their dazzle makes but a little shadow now. In his hand is the bell that
+sounds Take heed, Take heed, to the careless; and Pardon, Peace, to
+dying ears that strain to hear it. But largest of all his symbols is the
+lamp in his right hand; his own lamp, the lamp that dissipates Earth's
+last shadows--the Light of Death.
+
+Holbein must have had his own solemn memories of the Last Office as he
+drew this picture of the good parish priest. For it was just about this
+time that the Viaticum must have been administered to his father. In
+1526 the then Burgomaster of Basel wrote to the monastery at Issenheim,
+where Hans Holbein the Elder had left his painting implements behind him
+years before, in which he recalls to the Fathers how vainly and how
+often "our citizen," Hans the Younger, had applied to get these costly
+materials restored to their owner during his life; or to himself as his
+father's heir afterwards. This application was no more successful than
+Holbein's own, apparently; and the painter was told to seek his father's
+gold and pigments among the peasants who had pillaged the monastery.
+
+By 1526 Holbein was back in Basel; but two works of this year would go
+to show that he was little less separated from his wife in Basel than
+when away. The first of these, about one-third life-size, is a portrait
+of a woman with a child beside her who grasps an arrow to suggest the
+Goddess of Love attended by a wingless Cupid (Plate 16). The little
+red-haired child does not do much to realise the ideal; but the woman,
+though not an ideal Venus, might nevertheless well pose as a man's
+goddess. A "fair" woman in more senses than her colouring. Her dark-red
+velvet dress slashed with white; wide sleeves of dusky gold-coloured
+silk; her close-fitting black head-dress embroidered with gold; the soft
+seduction of her look; the welcoming gesture of that pretty palm flung
+outward as if to embrace; these are all in keeping.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 16
+  DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS THE GODDESS OF LOVE
+ _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+This was a lady whose past career might have warned a lover that
+whatever she might prove as a goddess, she could play but a fallen
+angel's part. The annals of Basel knew her only too well. This was
+Dorothea, the daughter of a knight of good old lineage,--Hans von
+Offenburg. But the knight died while she was quite young, and her
+mother, better famed for looks than conduct, married the girl to a
+debauched young aristocrat,--Joachim von Sultz. His own record is
+hardly less shameless than Dorothea's soon became,--though the latter
+is chiefly in archives of the "unspeakable" sort. At the time when this
+picture was painted she must have been about two-and-twenty.
+
+Unhappy Holbein, indeed! The temper of Xantippe herself, if she be but
+the decent mother of one's children, might work less havoc with a life
+than this embroidered cestus. But "the German Apelles" was no Greek
+voluptuary, ambitious in heathen vices, such as that other Apelles
+whose painting of Venus was said to be his masterpiece. And when
+Holbein inscribed his second portrait of Dorothea with the words LAIS
+CORINTHIACA, the midsummer madness must have been already a matter of
+scorn and wonder to himself. His whole life and the works of his life
+are the negation of the groves of Corinth.
+
+The paint was not long dry on the Goddess of Love--at any rate, her
+dress was not worn out--before he had seen her in her true colours; "the
+daughter of the horse-leech, crying Give, Give."
+
+And so he painted her in 1526 (Plate 17); to scourge himself, surely,
+since she was too notoriously infamous to be affected by it. As if in
+stern scorn of every beauty, every allure, he set himself to record
+them in detail: something in the spirit with which Macaulay set himself,
+"by the blessing of God," to do "full justice" to the poems of Montgomery.
+Lais is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than
+Venus. No emotion has hurried the painter's hand or confused his eye
+this time. In vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive
+dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. He knows them,
+now, for false lights on the wrecker's coast. No faltering; no turning
+back. He can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the
+puffed sleeves below the short ones. He is a painter now; not a lover.
+And lest there should be one doubt as to his purpose, he flings a heap
+of gold where "Cupid's" little hand would now seem desecrated, and
+inscribes beneath it the name that fits her beauty and his contempt.
+The plague was raging in Basel all through that spring and summer,
+but I doubt if Holbein shuddered at its contact as at the loveliness he
+painted. The brand he placed upon it is proof of that--Lais Corinthiaca,
+the infamous mistress of the Greek Apelles.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 17
+  DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS LAIS CORINTHIACA
+ _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+But in 1526 men sat among the ashes of far goodlier palaces and larger
+interests than personal ones. The party in power was not friendlier to
+Art than to the Church of Rome. In January the Painters' Guild had
+presented a petition to the Council,--humbly praying that its members,
+"who had wives and children depending on their work," might be allowed
+to pursue it in Basel! And so hard was Holbein himself hit by the
+fanatical excitement of the time that the Council's account-books show
+the paltry wage he was glad to earn for painting a few shields on some
+official building "in the borough of Waldenburg."
+
+Small wonder that an artist such as Holbein should feel his heart grow
+sick within him, and should turn his thoughts with increasing
+determination to some fresh field. Even without the bitterness that now
+must have edged the tongue of a wronged wife, or the bitterer taste of
+Dead Sea fruit in his own mouth,--he must have been driven to try his
+luck elsewhere. And of all the invitations urged upon him, the chances
+which Erasmus's introductions could give him in England would probably
+offer the greatest promise.
+
+But before he set out with these letters, in the late summer of 1526, he
+executed yet one more great commission for his old friend, Jacob Meyer
+zum Hasen, now leader of the Catholic party in opposition. This was the
+work known now to all the civilised world as "The Meyer Madonna." For
+centuries the beautiful picture which bears this name in the Dresden
+Gallery has been cited by every expert authority and critic as this
+work. But since the mysterious appearance of the Darmstadt painting,
+which suddenly turned up in a Paris art collector's possession, from no
+one knows where in 1822, the tide of belief has slowly receded from the
+Dresden painting. Until now there are only a few judges who do not
+hold--especially since the public comparison of the two works at Dresden
+in 1871--that the Dresden picture is "a copy by an inferior hand."
+
+Unquestionably the painting now in the Schloss at Darmstadt is the
+earlier version. And unquestionably, too, the changes introduced in the
+Dresden copy,--the elevated architecture, slenderer figures, and less
+happy Child,--are so great as to lend weight to the arguments of those
+who still claim that no copyist would ever have made them. But, as has
+been said, the contention that the Dresden work is a replica by Holbein
+of the older Darmstadt altar-piece, is now maintained by only a very
+small minority of judges. The painting of the Darmstadt work is admitted
+by all to be more uniformly admirable, more completely carried out;
+the details more finished (except in the case of the Virgin), and the
+colours richer and more harmonious. Yet both works should be studied to
+appreciate fully their claims and differences (Plates 18 and 19).
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 18
+  THE MEYER-MADONNA
+ _Oils. Grand Ducal Collection, Darmstadt_
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 19
+  THE MEYER-MADONNA
+  [_Later Version. Held by many to be a copy_]
+ _Oils. Dresden Gallery_
+
+In the Darmstadt work the Virgin's dress is wholly different in tone
+from her robe at Dresden; otherwise the colouring aims to be the same
+in each. Here, in the original altar-piece, it is a greenish-blue. The
+lower sleeves are golden, a line of white at the wrist, and a filmier
+one within the bodice. Her girdle is a rich red; her mantle a
+greenish-grey. Over this latter her fair hair streams like softest
+sunshine. Above her noble, pity-full face sits her crown of fine gold
+and pearls.
+
+The woman kneeling nearest to the Madonna is commonly believed to be
+Meyer's first wife, who had died in 1511, the mother of one child--a
+daughter--by a previous husband. Between this stepdaughter and Meyer
+there was considerable litigation over her property. The younger woman,
+whose chin-cloth is dropped in the painting though worn like the others
+in the drawing for her portrait, is Meyer's second wife, Dorothea
+Kannegiesser, whom he married about 1512, and with whom he was painted
+by Holbein in 1516. The sombre garments of both women are echoed by the
+black of Meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur.
+Meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a
+wonderful piece of psychology in the Darmstadt picture.
+
+In the drawing for the young girl, Anna Meyer, who kneels beside her
+mother with a red rosary in her hands, she has her golden-brown hair
+hanging loose down her back, as befits a girl of thirteen. But in
+the painting it is coiled in glossy braids beneath some ceremonial
+head-dress; this is richly embroidered with pearls, with red silk tassel
+and a wreath of red and white flowers above it. This head-dress is
+painted with much more beautiful precision in the older work, and the
+expression of the girl's face is much more deeply devout; her hands,
+too, are decidedly superior to those of the Dresden work.
+
+This is true also of the carpet, patterned in red and green, with
+touches of white and black, on a ground of deep yellow. The Dresden
+carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of
+Darmstadt, so much so that Waagen and others, who believe the former a
+replica, think a pupil or assistant may have been responsible for this
+and other details, which for some reason Holbein himself was unable to
+finish.
+
+The elder boy, with the tumbled brown hair, dressed in a light-brown
+coat trimmed with red-brown velvet, and hose of cinnabar-red, with
+decorations of gold clasps and tags on fine blue cords, has a
+yellowish-green portemonnaie, with tassels of dull blue hanging from his
+girdle. All the carnations are superb, and in the Darmstadt picture the
+infant Christ wears a sweet and happy smile. In that of Dresden He looks
+sad and ill; a fact which has given rise to the theory Ruskin
+adopted--that the Virgin had put down the divine Child and taken up
+Meyer's ailing one. But the absence of wonder on the faces of Meyer's
+family, and, indeed, the familiar affection of the elder boy, would of
+itself negative this theory. I have my own ideas as to this point, but
+it would serve no useful purpose to go into them in this place. Of these
+two sons of Meyer there is no other record. Anna alone survived her
+mother, who married again after Meyer's death. Anna's daughter married
+Burgomaster Remigius Faesch, or Fesch, whose grandson--Remigius Faesch,
+counsellor-at-law--was the well-known art collector whose collection and
+manuscript are also in the Basel Museum, where there is an oil-copy of
+the Dresden Meyer-Madonna.
+
+Even the cool eye of Walpole was warmed by this great work of 1526, as
+he saw it in the Dresden painting then hanging in the Palazzo Delfino
+at Venice. "For the colouring," he exclaims, "it is beautiful beyond
+description; and the carnations have that enamelled bloom so peculiar to
+Holbein, who touched his works till not a touch remained discernible."
+Twenty years earlier Edward Wright had written of Meyer's youngest
+boy--"The little naked boy could hardly have been outdone, if I may
+dare to say such a word, by Raphael himself." And in our own day that
+fine and measured critic, Mrs. Jameson, has spoken for generation upon
+generation who have thought the same thought before the Meyer-Madonna
+of Dresden, when she says of it: "In purity, dignity, humility and
+intellectual grace this exquisite Madonna has never been surpassed; not
+even by Raphael. The face, once seen, haunts the memory."
+
+When Wright and Walpole saw this Dresden work at Venice, it was supposed
+to be "the family of Sir Thomas More"--_Meier_ having slipped into
+"More" in the course of centuries, which had retained only the vivid
+impression of Holbein's association with the latter, and knew that
+the painter had drawn him in the midst of his family. That living
+association was now, late in the summer of this year, about to begin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHANCES AND CHANGES
+
+1526-1530
+
+  First visit to England--Sir Thomas More; his home and portraits--The
+  Windsor drawings--Bishop Fisher--Archbishop Warham--Bishop
+  Stokesley--Sir Henry Guildford and his portrait--Nicholas
+  Kratzer--Sir Bryan Tuke--Holbein's return to Basel--Portrait-group of
+  his wife and two eldest children; two versions--Holbein's children,
+  and families claiming descent from him--Iconoclastic fury--Ruined
+  arts--Death of Meyer zum Hasen--Another Meyer commissions the
+  last paintings for Basel--Return to England--Description of the
+  Steelyard--Portraits of its members--George Gysze--Basel Council
+  summons Holbein home--"The Ambassadors" at the National Gallery;
+  accepted identification--Coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn--Lost paintings
+  for the Guildhall of the Steelyard; the Triumphs of Riches and
+  Poverty--The great Morett portrait; identifications--Holbein's industry
+  and fertility--Designs for metal-work and other drawings--Solomon and
+  the Queen of Sheba.
+
+
+Two years earlier Erasmus had evidently thought that London was the
+true stage for such a genius as Holbein's, and More had written that
+he would gladly do all he could to further the painter's success if
+he should decide to visit England. More himself called Holbein "a
+marvellous artist" for his portrait of Erasmus, and could not but be
+delighted with the beautiful little woodcut which opened Froben's
+edition of his own _Utopia_.
+
+This illustration represents More and his only son seated with AEgidius,
+or Peter Gillis, in the latter's own garden at Antwerp, listening to the
+tale of _Utopia_ from the ancient comrade of Amerigo Vespucci. And very
+likely Holbein himself sat in this garden, in the late summer of 1526,
+when he was passing through Antwerp to England. He had a letter of
+introduction from Erasmus to AEgidius, as also to the host who was
+expecting him in England--Sir Thomas More.
+
+Van Mander says that long before this the Earl of Arundel, when pausing
+at Basel, had been so much pleased with Holbein's works in that city
+that he had urged the painter to forsake it for London. But it would
+pretty surely have been the promise of More's influence which actually
+induced him to try his fortune so far afield. And by the autumn of 1526
+he was one of that happy company which the genial soul of More drew
+around him in his new home in "Chelsea Village," where Beaufort Row now
+has its north end. Here the master's love of every art, and aptitude in
+affairs, filled his hospitable mansion with wit and music and joyous
+strenuousness. Here he was the idol of his family, as well as the King's
+friend. Henry himself must surely have shuddered could he have pictured
+that face, over which thought and humour were ever chasing one another
+like sun and shadow on the lawn, black above London Bridge and flung at
+last from it into the Thames only a few years hence. Now it turned to
+his own all life and loyalty, as he laid his arm around More's shoulders
+while they wandered between the garden beds of Chelsea.
+
+Early in 1527, probably, Holbein had finished the fine portrait of his
+host, which is now in Mr. Huth's collection. The study for this oil
+painting is among the Windsor drawings (Plate 20), as also one for
+the large family picture now lost, if indeed it was ever completed by
+Holbein; a matter of some doubt, notwithstanding Van Mander's account
+of it in the possession of the art-collector Van Loo. An outline sketch
+of it, or for it, he certainly made. And that precious pen-and-ink
+outline,--with the name of each written above or below the figure
+in More's hand, and notes as to alterations to be made in the final
+composition in Holbein's hand,--is now in the Basel Museum; having come
+into Amerbach's possession as the heir of Erasmus.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 20
+  SIR THOMAS MORE
+ _Chalks. Windsor Castle_
+
+In Mr. Huth's oil portrait More is wearing a dark-green coat trimmed
+with fur, and showing the purple sleeves of his doublet beneath. His
+eyes are grey-blue. He never wore a beard, made the fashion by Henry
+VIII. at the same time that the head was "polled,"--a singularly ugly
+combination,--until he was in the Tower and grew that beard which he
+smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "It," he
+said with astonishing self-possession, could be "accused of no treason."
+In 1527, however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the
+suspicion of it slept in More's own heart when he said to his son-in-law,
+in answer to some flattering congratulation on the King's favour, "Son
+Roper, if my head could win him a castle in France, my head should
+fall."
+
+But for these superb drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, we
+should know nothing at all of many a portrait Holbein painted--all
+among the immediate friends of More and Erasmus on this first visit
+to England; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later
+years. And how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of
+achievement is shown by the fact that they include no studies for a
+number of oil paintings that are still in existence.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 21
+  JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER
+ _Chalks. Windsor Castle_
+
+Of the drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a noble one of
+Bishop Fisher, whose execution preceded More's by only a few weeks. A
+literally venerable head it was (Plate 21), to be the shuttlecock of
+papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity.
+For assuredly if the life of the Bishop of Rochester hung in the
+balance, as it did, in May, 1535, it was Paul III.'s mad effrontery
+in making him a Cardinal while he was actually in the Tower under his
+sovereign's displeasure which heated the King's anger to white-hot
+brutality. "Let the Pope send him a hat," he thundered, "but I will so
+provide that he shall wear it on his shoulders, for head he shall have
+none to set it on!" And on the 17th of that June he made good the savage
+oath. Yet the painter, after all, has been more potent than the King.
+For here lives Fisher. Bishop or Cardinal this is the man, as More loved
+him.
+
+A striking and richly painted oil portrait of Erasmus's "Maecenas,"
+Archbishop Warham, is in the Louvre; of which there are a number of
+copies, as well as a replica, at Lambeth Palace. The latter was
+exhibited at Manchester in 1857. The study for these portraits is among
+the Windsor drawings. The painting in the Louvre has more vividness in
+the carnations, and the impasto is thicker than at Lambeth; otherwise
+the two are identical. But for myself I find a more seizing quality in
+the chalk drawing than in either. There is something in its sunken
+fading eyes that speaks of the majesty of office as well as its burdens.
+
+Holbein painted a prelate of a very different sort in the oil portrait
+of John Stokesley, Bishop of London, which is preserved at Windsor
+Castle. And yet he dared to paint the Truth--now as always. The painting
+is a masterpiece of modelling and soft transparency of light and shade.
+But the truculent, lowering countenance leaves small doubt that the
+sitter was a gentleman pre-eminently "gey ill to live wi'."
+
+There is another oil painting at Windsor which has not escaped the
+injuries of time, but is none the less a splendid survival of 1527. This
+is the portrait of Sir Henry Guildford, Master of the Horse to Henry
+VIII., and holder of many another office of trust (Plate 22). It has
+sometimes been thought that the yellow tone of the complexion was due to
+over-painting, but the chalk drawing shows that it was a personal
+peculiarity.
+
+Sir Henry, a warm friend to both More and Erasmus, was forty-nine when
+he sat for this portrait. Under his black fur-trimmed surcoat he wears
+a doublet of gold brocade. In his hand is the wand of office as
+Chamberlain, and he is decorated with the collar and badge of the
+Garter.
+
+He was always a great favourite with the King from the time when the
+latter came to the throne and young Guildford, then twenty, was one of
+the gayest, bravest, most loyal spirits about it. Always as ready for a
+real battle as a mimic one; as clever at writing plays for the King's
+amusement as at acting in them; as good in a revel as at a piece of
+diplomacy; it is not much wonder that his knighthood in 1512 should but
+have been the prelude to a long series of promotions.
+
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 22
+  SIR HENRY GUILDFORD
+ _Oils. Windsor Castle_
+
+The affection of master and man, too, was singularly sincere for a
+court. Sir Henry loyally supported the King's demand for a divorce, but
+he was by no means ready to support a second marriage without the papal
+preliminary. Hence he was not a persona grata to Anne Boleyn. Nor
+would he stoop to curry favour at the expense of an honest conviction.
+When Anne warned him that he was likely to lose his office as soon as
+she became Queen, he promptly replied that he would spare her all
+concern about that, and went straight to the King to resign the office
+of Controller. The latter showed the depth of his affection by urging
+Sir Henry, twice, to reconsider his determination. But he wisely
+preferred to quit his apartments under the King's roof,--without,
+however, breaking the bond of mutual attachment. Five years after this
+picture was painted he died; in May, 1532. Holbein also painted Lady
+Guildford's portrait; an oil painting in Mr. Frewer's collection. And
+Sir Henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to
+decorate the interior of the Banqueting Hall specially erected for the
+celebration of the French Alliance in 1527. By all of which it would
+seem that in securing a new patron the painter had once more made a
+friend.
+
+Erasmus had asked AEgidius to assist Holbein's success in any way he
+could. And it was probably owing to a letter from the Antwerp scholar
+that a friendship of many years sprang up between the painter and
+Nicholas Kratzer of Munich, then Astronomer-Royal at the Court of Henry
+VIII. It began with what was once a fine portrait. But the oil painting,
+now in the Louvre (Plate 23), has suffered such severe injuries as to be
+but a poor ghost of what it was originally. Only the composition, and
+the fidelity with which all his friend's scientific instruments are drawn
+attest Holbein. He never adds a detail for merely pictorial purposes;
+and never shuffles one that concerns the personality of a sitter. No
+biographer with his pen sets every straw to show the winds of character
+and circumstance more deliberately than does this historian with his
+brush. Something of Kratzer's shrewd wit,--for he was a "character"--can
+still be read in his half-destroyed picture. Years later we shall
+see the intimate friend of both him and his painter writing of the
+astronomer as a man "brim-full" of humour and fancy. And once, we may be
+sure, it sparkled in the eyes of Kratzer's portrait as brilliantly as in
+his own.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 23
+  NICHOLAS KRATZER
+ _Oils. The Louvre_
+
+In the Munich Gallery there is another portrait in oils which has
+undergone, if possible, still more atrocious treatment than Kratzer's;
+yet, like it, still keeps enough of its original charm to rivet attention
+in any company. This latter is one of the most striking of the
+half-dozen portraits of Sir Bryan Tuke, which all claim, with more or
+less of probability, to be paintings by Holbein. And certainly in the
+years when Sir Bryan was Treasurer of the King's Household it would be
+natural that the painter, whose salary he regularly disbursed, should
+gladly oblige him to his utmost.
+
+But the Munich portrait also shows a far deeper bond of interests than
+one of money. The undercurrent of their natures ran in a groove of more
+than common sympathy; and to an analyst, such as Holbein was, the
+reflections behind these inscrutable eyes were full of unusual
+attraction.
+
+Myself, I feel convinced, for more than one reason, that it is a work of
+some years later. But as a consensus of authorities places it during
+this visit, the picture is noticed here. It gains rather than loses by
+reproduction;--since the painting now shows a strange disagreeable
+colour most unlike the carnations of Holbein. But the composition is
+unmistakable (Plate 24). Between the sitter and the green-curtained
+background stands perhaps the ghastliest of all Holbein's skeletons,--one
+hand on his scythe, the other grimly pointing at the nearly-spent sands
+of the hour-glass. Below the latter is a tablet on which, in Latin, are
+the words of Job: "My short life, does it not come to an end soon?" and
+the signature without the date. Sir Bryan wears a fur-trimmed doublet
+with gold buttons; the gold-patterned sleeves revealed by the black silk
+gown, also trimmed with fur. On a massive gold chain he wears a cross of
+great richness, enamelled with the pierced Hands and Feet. Fine lawn is
+at throat and wrists; and in one hand he holds his gloves.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 24
+  SIR BRYAN TUKE
+ _Oils. Munich Gallery_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the researches of Eduard His, it used to be sometimes said that
+Holbein had virtually deserted his family when he left Basel in 1526. We
+know now, however, that whatever were the moral wrongs which he suffered
+or committed, he never forsook the duty of providing for his wife and
+children in no ungenerous proportion to his means.
+
+The records show that the fruit of his two years' industry was used to
+acquire a comfortable home which remained the property of his wife. And
+the inventory of its contents at Elsbeth's death, some six years after
+Holbein's death, proves that this home was to the full as well furnished
+and comfortable as was usual with people of similar condition.
+
+In the summer of 1528 the painter bade farewell for ever to Sir Thomas
+More's gracious Chelsea home. He took with him the pen-and-ink sketch
+for a large picture of More in the midst of his family, which has been
+already referred to. This was for Erasmus, who had temporarily abandoned
+Basel,--now so utterly unlike the Basel of former years,--and had sought
+the more sympathetic atmosphere of Freiburg. Bonifacius Amerbach, from
+the same causes, was here with Erasmus for some time. So that something
+like the old Froben days must have seemed still about them as the three
+friends sat together and talked of all that had come and gone.
+
+But by the latter part of August Holbein was back in that now
+sadly-altered Basel whence his best friends were reft by trouble or
+death. And on the 29th of August, 1528, he bought the house next to
+Froben's _Buchhaus_, the deed attesting that he did so in person, in
+company with Elsbeth. The price, 300 guldens or florins, was by no means
+the small one it now seems, nor could the painter pay the whole sum at
+once. He paid down one-third, and secured the rest by a mortgage. The
+site of this house is now occupied by 22 St. Johann Vorstadt. Three
+years later, March 28th, 1531, Holbein bought out a disagreeable
+neighbour; and thus added to his two-storied house overlooking the
+Rhine the little one-storied cottage which cost him only seventy
+guldens. The factory at No. 20 now partially covers this latter site.
+Fifty years ago both of the original houses were still standing; quaint,
+crumbling, affecting monuments of days when Holbein's voice and
+Holbein's step rang through their rooms, when Frau Elsbeth swept and
+garnished them; and when four children added their links to the chain of
+a marriage which Holbein was now manfully trying to make the best of.
+
+It must have been in the year after the purchase of the larger house
+that he painted the group of his wife and the two children she had then
+borne him. This life-size group, done in oils on paper, is now in the
+Basel Museum (Plate 25). The stoical sincerity with which they are
+represented, and the hard outline produced by cutting out the work to
+mount it on its wood panel, makes a somewhat repellent impression at the
+first glance. And this is in no way dispersed by studying Elsbeth's
+traits. But the painting itself is a tour-de-force. By sheer Quality
+Holbein has invested these portraits,--a middle-aged, coarse-figured,
+unamiable-looking woman, a very commonplace infant, and a bright-faced
+boy,--with the prestige inseparable from an achievement of a high
+order.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 25
+  ELSBETH, HOLBEIN'S WIFE, WITH THEIR TWO ELDEST CHILDREN
+ _Oils. Basel Museum_
+
+Clearly Elsbeth Holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth
+simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut
+and fashion of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in
+the Louvre. Her lustreless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil
+and a reddish-brown cap. Her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with
+thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. The baby wears a gown of
+undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of dark bluish green.
+
+Out of such unpromising materials has the painter made a picture that
+would challenge attention among any. If we knew nothing as to the
+identity of this woman, sitting oblivious of the children at her knee,
+wrapped in her own dark thoughts, we should certainly want to know
+something of her story and of the story of the little fellow whose eyes
+are breathlessly intent upon some purer, sweeter vision. There is at
+Cologne, in a private collection, a deeply interesting duplicate of
+this work; also on paper afterwards mounted on wood, but not cut out.
+Unfortunately this latter has suffered such irremediable injuries that
+it is quite impossible now to pronounce upon its claim to be either the
+earlier example or a replica; but good judges have believed it to be by
+Holbein. Its chief interest, however, from a biographical point of view,
+may be said to lie in the sixteenth-century writing pasted on at the
+top. Literally translated, this runs--
+
+  "Love towards God consists in Charity.
+  Who hath this love can feel no hate."[5]
+
+It is difficult to see on what grounds Woltmann, who was inclined to
+accept the picture as genuine, should hold the inscription to have
+been added by someone desirous of increasing the value of the work by
+representing it to be an allegorical picture of Charity. There was never
+a time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value
+as the portraits. And surely the second line is utterly inconsistent
+with the theory. Original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a
+plea which Holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a
+bitterness his own errors could not have tended to cure.
+
+When the Basel painting was cut out to be mounted, the last numeral was
+lost; so that it now stands dated 152-. But all the other facts put it
+beyond question that the picture could not have been done before 1529.
+The baby of 1522 was now the boy of seven, and his successor would seem
+to have been born during the first months of its father's visit to
+England, and to be now some eighteen months old.
+
+It may be as well to say here, once for all, as much as need be said of
+Holbein's family. As already stated, his wife survived him by six years,
+dying at Basel in 1549. By her first marriage she had one son, Franz
+Schmidt--who seems to have been a worthy and successful man of trade.
+She was the mother of four children by her marriage with Holbein;--Philip,
+born 1522; Katharina, 1527; Jacob, about 1530; and Kuenegoldt, about
+1532.
+
+Some years before the painter's death he took Philip Holbein to Paris,
+and there apprenticed him to the eminent goldsmith, Jerome David, with
+whom he remained until a couple of years after Holbein's death. Later,
+he somehow drifted to Lisbon, where he followed his trade until he
+settled in the old home of his grandfather and great-grandfather,
+Augsburg. In 1611 his son, Philip Holbein, junior, then "Imperial Court
+Jeweller" at Augsburg, petitioned the Emperor Matthias for letters
+patent to "confirm" his right to certain noble arms. The claims put
+forward in this document are utterly at variance with the received
+belief in Holbein's humble Augsburg origin. Yet the most expert
+investigators who have carefully studied this subject agree in thinking
+that this grandson based the genealogical tree on mythical foundations,
+and therefore planted it remote from Augsburg itself. But be this as it
+may--and it seems hard to reconcile such discrepancies within a century
+of the time when both Hans Holbein the Elder and his son were well-known
+citizens of Augsburg,--the application was successful. Mechel says that
+this Philip, who claims descent from the renowned "painter of Basel,"
+lived in Vienna during his later years; and that a descendant of his
+again got their patent "confirmed" in 1756, with the right to carry the
+surname of _Holbeinsberg_; also that this latter descendant was made a
+Knight of the Empire in 1787, as the noble _von Holbeinsberg_. So much
+for the eldest branch, that of Philip Holbein.
+
+The younger boy, Jacob, was a goldsmith in London after Holbein's death.
+The evidence seems to show that he was never here previous to that
+event,--which of itself may have first occasioned his coming, though
+hardly at the time, as Jacob was not more than thirteen at his father's
+death. A document in existence proves that he also died in London, about
+1552, and apparently unmarried; at which time his elder brother, Philip,
+was still in Lisbon.
+
+Katharina, the elder daughter, the baby of the Basel painting, seems to
+have left no descendants. She married a butcher of Basel and died in
+1590. And in the same year, very likely from one of the frequent
+epidemics so fatal to Basel, died Kuenegoldt, Elsbeth's youngest child.
+The Merian family of Frankfurt-am-Main claims an hereditary right to
+the artistic gifts of its famous copper-engraver, Mathew Merian, as
+descendants of Holbein through this daughter Kuenegoldt, who, when she
+died, was the wife of Andreas Syff, a miller, of Basel. According to
+the greatest authority on this subject, Eduard His, to whose exhaustive
+researches we owe almost all that is known of Holbein's family, the
+Merian claims have not, so far, been proved by actual archives; but he
+is of opinion that there is considerable circumstantial evidence to
+support their claim to be lineal descendants of Holbein through the
+female line.
+
+But in 1529, when the family group was painted, neither Jacob nor
+Kuenegoldt were yet born; and the painter was much more concerned with
+the anxieties of a living father than with the shadowy cares of an
+ancestor.
+
+And dark enough was the outlook in Basel, where the Lutheran agitation
+had, as Erasmus said, "frozen the arts." Before Holbein came back from
+England many churches had abjured all pictures. The tide of religious
+antagonism had, as we know, driven both Erasmus and Bonifacius Amerbach
+for a time to a Catholic stronghold; and had driven their old friend
+Meyer to do literal battle on behalf of the Church.
+
+Altar paintings were out of the question. And Holbein could but devote
+himself to designs for the printers and for goldsmiths. Many beautiful
+compositions for both crafts remain to testify of his matured powers
+and constant industry. The exquisite designs for dagger-sheaths, in
+particular, are rightly counted among the treasures of art. But in the
+summer of 1530 came a commission for the painter's last great work in
+Basel. This was the long-delayed order for the decoration of that vacant
+wall in the Council Hall, which adjoined the house _zum Hasen_.
+
+Oddly enough, this commission also came officially through a
+burgomaster, Jacob Meyer. But the Meyer of 1530, Meyer "of-the-Stag"
+(_zum Hirten_), had neither blood nor sentiments in common with the
+Meyer under whom Holbein had done his first work in the Rathaus. Each
+headed a party at deadly issue. For the past year Meyer-of-the-Hare had
+vainly tried to turn back the clock or to stay the iconoclastic fury
+of the hour. Religious fanaticism had wrecked him as well as every
+beautiful piece of art on which it could lay its hands. And now at last
+it mattered nothing any more so far as he was concerned. The dreadful
+harvests that had brought virtual famine, the earthquake shocks which
+had unsettled many a mental as well as material foundation, the flooding
+devastations of the Birsig, the rage of Canton against Canton, the Civil
+War ready to begin, Pope or Luther come by his own,--it was all one at
+last to Meyer zum Hasen, who died just as his protege of earlier years
+was commissioned to paint the blank wall.
+
+But something of his spirit, something of what he himself had been
+preaching to Basel in warning and threat for years, seems to have passed
+on into the pictures Holbein set before the Council. The paintings,
+alas! are no more. But a fragment or two and the drawings for them show
+how truly grand the two works were which Holbein had probably already
+intended should be his swan-song as Holbein _Basiliensis_. He chose for
+his subjects Rehoboam's answer to the suffering Israelites: "My little
+finger shall be thicker than my father's loins; my father hath chastised
+you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions"; and Samuel
+prophesying to Saul how dearly he shall learn that "Rebellion is as the
+sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry."
+
+Both subjects are treated in the Great manner. Rehoboam, leaning forward
+from his throned seat with flashing eyes, and his little finger seeming
+actually to quiver in the air, is wonderfully conceived. But the meeting
+of Samuel and Saul (Plate 26) most splendidly demonstrates how far
+Holbein towered above mere portraiture when he had the opportunity. To
+picture this drawing in all the beauty of colour is to realise what we
+have lost, and what his just fame has lost, with the utter destruction
+of such works.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 26
+ _Behold to obey is better than sacrifice_
+  SAMUEL DENOUNCING SAUL
+ _Washed Drawing. Basel Museum_
+
+Not the greatest of the Italians could have improved upon the
+distribution and balance of this composition. The blazing background,
+the sense of a densely crowded host beyond what the eye can grasp, of
+captives and captors--all the stupendous crackle and roar and shout
+and sudden strained silence of Saul's immediate followers--is amply
+matched by those two typical protagonists, just then repeating the old
+drama with varying fortunes on the world's new stage. The Secular Arm
+has been short in the service of God, as interpreted by his Vicar; it
+has thought, in Saul's person, to win the cause, yet spare its enemies.
+Vain is it for him to run with humility, to tell what he has won and
+what overcome and done. He has not destroyed All--root and branch. For
+reasons of personal policy, he has given quarter. And the Priest, for
+God, will have none of his well-meaning excuses, of his good intentions,
+his policy, his burnt offerings of half-way measures;--"Behold to obey
+is better than sacrifice," begins his fierce anathema, "and to hearken
+than the fat of rams."
+
+Doubtless the Protestant party read its own meanings into these texts,
+when once the pictures were painted and paid for with seventy-two good
+guldens. But two very significant facts form their own commentary. One
+is that the only employment he received from the Council afterward was
+to redecorate the old Laellenkoenig monstrosity on the bridge!--and the
+other, that as soon as Holbein got his pay for this disgraceful
+commission, a pay he was now much too hard pressed to refuse, he quietly
+slipped away from Basel without taking the Council into his confidence.
+Judging from his after conduct to his family, he probably left the
+seventy-two guldens to support his wife and children--now four little
+ones--until such time as he could send them more from England; and took
+his way once more, in the late autumn of 1531, with knapsack and
+paint-brushes for the journey, to a city that might give him few walls
+to cover, but would certainly not set him to painting the town clock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Things had changed in London also, and gravely, Holbein found, since
+he had quitted Sir Thomas More's home at Chelsea with the sketch for
+Erasmus, in the summer of 1528. He had barely settled himself, in the
+City this time, before the struggle between Henry VIII. and the English
+Clergy ended in that Convocation when the latter made its formal
+"Submission." And in the same month that this took place, Sir Henry
+Guildford died. Then the three great Acts of Parliament, which swept
+away the crying abuses of "Benefit of Clergy," resurrected the "dead"
+lands (so called because perpetually _aliened in mortmain_) by restoring
+them to the national circulation of the Sovereign-Will, and turned the
+rich stream of Annates or "First-Fruits" of the bishoprics from the
+Pope's coffers to the King's,--were passed in this year.
+
+This legislation was followed by the solemn protest and then the death
+of Archbishop Warham. So that now of that great and close quartet of
+friends,--Colet, Warham, More, and Erasmus,--there were two on either
+shore of the last crossing. And More could already see the dark river
+ahead. His eye marked the consequences of the Acts as keenly as his aged
+friend Warham had discerned them on his death-bed; and shortly after the
+"Submission," More resigned his great office as Chancellor.
+
+These seem matters too high to twist the threads of a poor painter's
+life. But in reality Holbein's career was shaped, from many a year back,
+by such events as rarely touch the humble individual directly. All his
+friends and all his patrons in this country were carried far out of
+reach by 1532; and he must sink or swim, as they in darker waters,
+according to his own powers. That under such unexpected ill-fortune he
+did not immediately sink was due to two things--the greatness of his
+powers, and the circumstance that a trading-company of Continentals,
+chiefly German, was seated in London with immense wealth and immense
+influence at its disposal, and that they were men who knew how to
+appreciate Holbein at his worth.
+
+The roots of the Steelyard (_Stahlhof_), or "Stilyard," as it is often
+called in early dramatists, go far back to the legendary centuries of
+English history. From before the time of Alfred the Great, traders from
+Germany had clustered together on the bank of the Thames, close to where
+Cannon Street Station now stands. Amalgamation with the Hanseatic
+League, and the necessities and gratitude of more than one king of
+England--but especially of Edward IV.--had made of the Steelyard a
+company such as only the East India Company of later centuries may
+be compared to. With the world's new geography and new commercial
+conditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its methods and
+its monopoly of the seas were gradually superseded by the great seamen
+of the Elizabethan era. But in Holbein's time, though already some of
+the Hanseatic ships were too overgrown to pass London Bridge and cast
+anchor at their own docks just above it, there was scarce a cloud upon
+the colossal prosperity of the Steelyard.
+
+Its walled and turreted enclosure, able to withstand the fiercest
+assaults of Wat Tyler's men, stretched from the river northward to
+Thames Street, and from Allhallows Street on the east to Dowgate Street
+on the west; and it might well have been described as a German city and
+port situated in the heart of the City of London. Its massive front in
+Thames Street, where were its three portcullised and fortified gateways
+with German inscriptions above and the Imperial Double-Eagle high over
+all, was one of the sights of London. And the Steelyard Tavern was a
+famous resort. When Holbein knew it well the greatest prelates and
+nobles and all the Court crowd,--which stretched its gardens and great
+houses from the stream of the Fleet, just west of the City wall, to
+Westminster Abbey,--used to flock to this Thames Street corner of the
+Steelyard to drink Rhenish wine and eat smoked reindeer-tongue and
+caviar.
+
+Within the gates stood the big Guildhall, which answered both for its
+councils and its noted banquets. The high carved mantelpieces and
+wainscotting served admirably to display the glittering plate and
+strange souvenirs of every known land and sea. On the walls which
+Holbein's works were so to enrich hung portraits of eminent members of
+the Guild. The Hall was flanked by the huge stone kitchen and by a
+strong-tower for the safeguarding of special valuables. In the open
+space between the Hall and the west wall of the enclosure was the
+garden, where trees and flowers and a greenery of vines had been planted
+in exact imitation of the gardens of the Fatherland. And here sat
+Holbein among the Associates, many a time, over their good cheer,--as in
+the old Basel gardens of the Blume or the Stork in other years, and
+heard only the German tongue or the songs of home around him.
+
+Away down to the docks ran the lanes of warehouses; shops and booths
+where every German trader or craftsman in London had his place; and
+where the merchandise of the world--the greater part of it destined for
+Luebeck as a centre of European distribution--might be sampled. Here were
+choicest specimens of the then costly spices of Cathay, or the famous
+falcons of Norway and Livonia, for which English sportsmen were willing
+to pay fabulous prices.
+
+As in other guilds, the government of this cosmopolitan beehive was that
+of a despotic democracy. All the inmates of the precincts were subjected
+to a rule little short of monastic in its strict discipline. The penalties
+for any infringement, for drunkenness or dicing or even for an abusive
+epithet, were very severe. The civic duties of the corporation, too,
+were sharply defined. In case of war every member had his appointed post
+in the defence of London. Every "master" had to keep the prescribed
+accoutrements and arms ready for immediate use, and the repairs and
+maintenance of the Bishop's Gate were at the sole cost of the Steelyard.
+
+No chapel was erected within its enclosure, the Guild preferring to be
+incorporated with the adjoining parish of Allhallows. Whether or not
+there is any truth at the bottom of the ancient tradition that this
+church had been originally founded by Germans, the Guild maintained its
+own altar in it in Holbein's time, where Masses were said on its own
+special days and festivals. So far are the facts from the common
+supposition that the doctrines of Luther would find natural favour in
+such a community, that the latter only gradually came into the "Church
+of England" by the same slow processes which transformed the whole
+parish around it. And when More, who was anything but _Utopian_ himself
+in the practice of tolerating "heresy" during his chancellorship, headed
+a domiciliary visit in search of Lutheran writings, he could find
+nothing but orthodox German Prayer-books and the Scriptures, whose use
+among laymen he always strenuously advocated; while every member of the
+community was able to make honest and hearty oath at St. Paul's Cross
+that no heretic or heretical doctrine would be tolerated amongst them.
+
+Here, then, in this staunch citadel of his own faith, Holbein naturally
+found a new circle of friends among whom it must have been strangely
+easy to fancy himself back in the Fischmarkt of his young years, with
+Froben and Erasmus and Amerbach and Meyer zum Hasen.
+
+The curtain rings up on his work for the Steelyard,--work which covered
+many years and more fine paintings than could even be enumerated
+here--with a superlative exhibition of all his powers. The oil portrait
+of Georg Gyze, or George Gisze, as it is often written, now in the
+Berlin Gallery (Plate 27), inscribed 1532, has called forth the
+enthusiastic eulogies of every competent judge. By a piece of rare good
+fortune it is in perfect preservation. The black of the surcoat alone
+has lost a little of its first lustre; all the rest is as though it had
+left the easel but the other day.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 27
+  JOeRG (OR GEORGE) GYZE
+ _Oils. Berlin Museum_
+
+The young merchant is seated among his daily surroundings in the
+Steelyard. He is in the act of leisurely opening a letter addressed, "To
+the hand of the honourable Joerg Gyze, my brother, in London, England"
+(_Dem ersamen herrn Joerg Gyzen zu Lunden in Engelant meinem broder to
+henden_). The merchant's motto, "No pleasure without care," is chalked
+up in Latin on the background, with his signature beneath it. Written on
+a paper stuck higher up is a Latin verse in praise of the portrait; also
+the date, and the sitter's age--thirty-four. On the racks and shelves
+are documents, books, keys, a watch and seals, and a pair of scales. A
+gold ball is hanging from above with a lovely chasing in blue enamel; a
+miracle of painting in itself, to say nothing of the exquisite Venetian
+glass, filled with water and carnation-pinks. This flower has its own
+meaning, and is introduced in more than one of Holbein's portraits. On
+the rich oriental table-cloth are writing materials also, with
+account-books, seal and scissors.
+
+Gyze himself is a fair-haired man, wearing a brilliant red silk doublet
+beneath his black cloak. And the amazing thing is that amidst this
+bewildering array of pictures--for every article is such in itself,
+owing to the perfection of its painting--Gyze is not lost or overridden
+for a moment. It is unmistakably _his_ picture; and he dominates the
+accessories as much as he did in reality. The man, the whole man, is
+there; and the things are there around him; that is all. But that
+the eye recognises this is the demonstration of the painter's own
+mastership. It is as much Holbein's peculiar secret as are the cool
+shadows, the luminous glow, the astounding elaboration, all made to
+express the dignity of one, and but one, theme.
+
+As has been said, the Steelyard portraits are too many to even catalogue
+here, covering many years. But Gyze's may be taken as their high-water
+mark. For that matter it could not, in its own way, be surpassed by
+any portrait. Holbein himself greatly surpassed it in the matter of
+subtle and noble simplicity, in his two greatest extant pieces of
+portraiture--the Morett of Dresden and the Duchess of Milan, now
+in our National Gallery. But in technical powers, and the power of
+subordinating their very virtuosity to the requirement of a true
+picture, this was a superlative expression of his matured method.
+
+In the midst of all his fresh London successes came a summons from
+Basel, which must have made the painter smile a little grimly. It had
+slowly dawned on the Council that Holbein--whose renown they well knew
+was a feather in Basel's cap--was proposing to make a prolonged absence.
+The result was a decision which the Burgomaster officially conveyed to
+him. Jacob Meyer zum Hirten wrote to say that Holbein was desired to
+return immediately to resume the duties of a citizen-artist, and that
+the Council, anxious to assist him in the support of his family, had
+resolved to allow him an annuity of thirty guldens yearly "until
+something better" could be afforded. Whether he replied in evasive
+terms, or whether he let the Laellenkoenig speak for him, is not on
+record.
+
+By the time Holbein received this letter, written late in the autumn of
+1532, he was plunged into a year of almost incredible activity. The
+whole of it would hardly seem too long for one such painting as the
+life-size double portrait--his largest extant portrait-painting--that
+now belongs to the National Gallery: "The Ambassadors" (Plate 28).
+
+At the extremities of a heavy table, something like a rude dinner-waggon,
+are two full-length figures which show a curious reflection of his
+early defect in their want of sufficient height. At the spectator's left
+stands a richly-costumed individual, whose stalwart proportions, ruddy
+complexion, and boldly ardent eye denote the perfection of vigorous
+health, and are in striking contrast to the physique, colouring, and
+expression of his companion. The former wears a black velvet doublet,
+which reveals an under-garment of gleaming rose-red satin. Over all
+is a black velvet mantle lined and trimmed with white fur. On his black
+cap is a silver brooch which displays a skull. He wears a gold badge
+exhibiting a mailed figure spearing a dragon suspended by a heavy gold
+chain. The hilt of his sword is seen at his left hand, and his right
+grasps a gold-sheathed dagger. On this latter is the inscription: AET.
+SVAE. 29; and from it depends a massive green-and-gold silk tassel,
+incomparably painted.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 28
+  "THE AMBASSADORS"
+ _Oils. National Gallery_
+
+As has been noted, the complexion of the man at our right is singularly
+pallid; the eyes mournfully listless; the skin of his knuckles drawn
+into the wrinkles of wasting tissues. He wears a scholar's cap and gown;
+the latter of some chocolate-brown pile, richly patterned, and lined
+with brown fur. He holds his gloves in his right hand and leans this
+arm on a closed book, on the edges of which is the lettering: AETATIS SVAE
+25.
+
+An oriental cover is spread on the table, and upon it are a number of
+the scientific instruments common to astrology and to the uses of
+astronomers like Kratzer, in whose portrait at the Louvre they are also
+to be seen. On the lower shelf are mathematical and musical instruments
+and books. The two latter are opened to display their text conspicuously.
+Near the man at our left, and kept open by a T-square, is the Arithmetic
+which Peter Apian, astronomer and globe-maker, published in 1527. It is
+opened at a page in Division, with its German text plainly legible and
+identical with the actual page, as seen in the British Museum's copy of
+this edition.
+
+The book nearest the man at our right, lying beneath the lute, has been
+also identified as Luther's Psalm-book with music,--in which the German
+text is by himself and the music by Johann Walther--first published in
+1524. Mr. Barclay Squire has shown that the two hymns could not, however,
+have faced each other in reality, as they do in the painting, without
+the intervening leaves having been purposely suppressed to gain this
+end. These hymns are "Come Holy Ghost" (_Kom Heiliger Geyst Herregott_)
+and "Mortal, wouldst thou live blessedly?" (_Mensch wiltu leben
+seliglich_). In each case the entire verse is given.
+
+The background is a green-diapered damask curtain most significantly
+drawn aside to show a silver crucifix high up in the left-hand corner,
+above the man with the dagger and sword. On the beautiful mosaic
+pavement is an ugly object that looks like some dried fish. But
+experiments have shown that the French Sale-Catalogues in which this
+work first appears in the eighteenth century--first, that is, so far as
+we can trace it by any records now known--were right in calling this a
+"skull in perspective"; _i.e._ a skull painted as seen distorted in a
+convex mirror. Some hint of its true character can be gathered, though
+not much, by looking at this object from the lower left-hand corner of
+the painting, when the exaggerated length will be seen to be reduced to
+something more nearly approaching the height of the usual "Death's
+Head."
+
+According to the views which are now officially accepted by the National
+Gallery, the persons of this picture are two French Catholics. The one
+at our left is Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, Bailly of Troyes
+and Knight of the French Order of St. Michael, of which he wears the
+badge without the splendid collar--as was permitted, by a special
+statute, to persons in the field, on a journey, or in a privacy that
+would not require the full dress of a state occasion. Jean de Dinteville
+was French Ambassador at the Court of Henry VIII. in 1533; born in 1504,
+he was then twenty-nine. He died in 1555.
+
+The man in the scholar's cap and gown is George de Selve, privately
+associated with de Dinteville's mission for a few weeks in the spring of
+1533. He was born in 1508, nominated Bishop of Lavaur in 1526, and
+confirmed in that office in 1529, in which year he was French Ambassador
+at the Court of Charles V. He was twenty-five in 1533, and died in 1541.
+
+For myself, holding convictions concerning these portraits utterly at
+variance with any published opinions--and that in more than one vital
+respect--I am compelled to limit my account to the bare record of its
+appearance and catalogued description, until prepared to submit other
+facts and conclusions to a verdict.
+
+Two portraits in the Hague Gallery, each with a falcon hooded on the
+wrist, show to how much purpose Holbein had studied these birds in the
+Steelyard. The one of Robert Cheseman, done in this year, is especially
+fine, with a strange, elusive suggestion of something kindred in the
+nature of man and bird.
+
+In 1533, also, the Steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration
+of Anne Boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. And the result was,
+as Stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the
+merchants of the Stilyard, wherein was the Mount Parnassus, with the
+Fountaine of Helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams
+without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup
+above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with Rhenish wine
+till night. On the mountaine sat Apollo, and at his feet sat Calliope;
+and on every side of the mountaine sate four Muses, playing on severell
+sweet instruments."
+
+But of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil
+paintings--the Triumph of Riches and the Triumph of Poverty--which he
+executed for the Hall of the Steelyard. In their day they were renowned
+far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion,
+perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the Solothurn
+Madonna.
+
+When the Guild was compelled to abandon the Steelyard, in Queen
+Elizabeth's reign, the Hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that
+when it regained possession, under James I., everything was in a sad
+state of neglect. And when the association finally dissolved not long
+after, the Hanseatic League agreed to present these paintings to Henry
+Prince of Wales, known, like Charles I., to be a lover of Art.
+
+If they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged
+them with, or presented them to, the Earl of Arundel. For in 1627
+Sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an
+enthusiastic admirer of Holbein's work. After this, one or two vague
+notices suggest that they somehow drifted to Flanders, and thence to
+Paris. But there every trace of them is lost. Federigo Zucchero thought
+they yielded to no work of the kind, even among Italian masters; and
+copied them from pure admiration. Holbein's drawing for the Triumph of
+Riches is in the Louvre Collection.
+
+That he ever painted Anne Boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful.
+The portrait among the Windsor drawings which has been labelled with her
+name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. But in
+1534 he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers--Thomas
+Cromwell, then Master of the Jewel House.
+
+And it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some
+respects the greatest of all his portraits--one of the galaxy of supreme
+works of all portraiture--the oil painting of Morett, or Morette, so
+long regarded as a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art. The world knows
+it well in the Dresden Gallery (Plate 29).
+
+The figure is life-size. The pose, even the costume in its feasible
+essentials, strikingly repeats the Whitehall portrait of Henry VIII., as
+copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. The
+background is a green curtain.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 29
+  THE MORETT PORTRAIT
+ _Oils. Dresden Gallery_
+
+The sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor Order of any
+sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with
+white, the broad fur collar of sable. In his cap is a cameo brooch. His
+buttons are gold; and a gold locket hangs from a plain, heavy chain of
+the same metal. His right hand carries his gloves, his left rests on the
+gold sheath of the dagger that hangs from his waist. His auburn hair and
+beard is streaked with grey.
+
+No words, no reproduction, can hope to express the qualities of such
+a painting. Neither can show the mastery or the spell by which the green
+background, the hair, the cool transparent flesh-tones, the fur, the
+satin, the gold, are all woven into a witchery as virile as it is
+penetrating.
+
+This is another work which has undergone more than one transformation in
+the course of its records. As late as 1657 it was correctly ascribed to
+Holbein in the Modena Collection. But the first syllable of the sitter's
+name has been its only constant. In time Morett slipped into Moretta,
+and then--like _Meier_ in the Madonna picture--into Morus. So far it
+seems to have clung to some English tradition. But when Morus got
+changed to Moro it was but natural for an Italian to think of Ludovico
+Sforza, "Il Moro." Long before this Holbein had become Olbeno; and
+thereafter a puzzle. When the portrait was labelled Sforza, however, who
+could its obviously great painter be but Leonardo? _Et voila!_ Thus the
+work passed to the Gallery and Catalogue of the Royal Collection at
+Dresden. And thus it long remained, as if to attest the true level of
+Holbein's genius.
+
+But when the Gallery also acquired the drawing of the Arundel
+Collection, labelled "Mr. Morett" in Hollar's engraving from it, the
+painting was held to be unquestionably identified by it as Hubert
+Morett, goldsmith to Henry VIII. Nor is there anything incongruous in
+this belief. Such a master goldsmith was no tradesman, in our sense of
+the word. He was often much more like one of our merchant princes. The
+merchants of the Steelyard were frequently the royal bankers, and many
+times were employed on high and delicate diplomatic missions to other
+courts. Neither is there anything in the sitter's dress to forbid it to
+a man of this stamp, even after the sumptuary laws of Henry VIII. were
+passed; while there is much, very much, to suggest an English origin.
+
+On the other hand, M. Larpent has now shown that the Arundel drawing was
+down in a catalogue of 1746-7 as: "One Holbein, Sieur de Moret, one of
+the French hostage in England"; and also that a "Chas. sieur de Morette"
+is recorded among the four French hostages sent to England in 1519. It
+would thus appear that the painting is a portrait of Charles de Solier,
+seigneur de Morette; an eminent soldier and diplomatist of France; born
+in 1480, Ambassador to England more than once, and finally, in 1534.
+
+Besides all the portraits of Holbein's English period, many of them
+scattered throughout the collections of all Europe, and many others now
+lost, it must not be forgotten that he was at the same time pouring
+forth miniature paintings, designs for engraving, designs for the
+goldsmith, and conceptions of every sort--from a carved chimney-piece to
+a woman's jewelled trinket; and all designed with the same exquisite
+precision and felicity. In the British Museum as on the Continent these
+drawings are an education in themselves. And besides the portrait
+studies in the Windsor Collection there is a sketch for a large painting
+which, if ever executed, is lost: "The Queen of Sheba visiting King
+Solomon."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PAINTER ROYAL
+
+1536-1543
+
+  Queen Jane Seymour--Death of Erasmus, and title-page portrait--The
+  Whitehall painting of Henry VIII.--Munich drawing of Henry VIII.--Birth
+  of an heir and the "Jane Seymour Cup"--Death of the Queen--Christina,
+  Duchess of Milan--Secret service for the King--Flying visit to Basel
+  and arrangements for a permanent return--Apprentices his son Philip at
+  Paris--Portrait of the Prince of Wales and the King's return gift--Anne
+  of Cleves--Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk--Catherine Howard--Lapse
+  of Holbein's Basel citizenship--Irregularities--Provision for wife
+  and children--Residence in London--Execution of Queen Catherine
+  Howard--Marriage of Catherine Parr--Dr. Chamber--Unfinished work for
+  the Barber-Surgeons' Hall--Death of Holbein--His will--Place of
+  burial--Holbein's genius; its true character and greatness.
+
+
+These were years of pleasant friendships, too, as well as work and
+cares. Nicholas Bourbon, scholar and poet, after his sojourn in London,
+writes back in 1536: "Greet in my name as heartily as you can all with
+whom you know me to be connected by intercourse and friendship." And
+after mentioning high dignitaries who had followed the King's example of
+showing special courtesies to Bourbon, he adds: "Mr. Cornelius Heyss, my
+host, the King's Goldsmith; Mr. Nicolaus Kratzer, the King's Astronomer,
+a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies; and Mr. Hans,
+the Royal Painter, the Apelles of our time. I wish them from my heart
+all joy and happiness." This little pen-picture of Holbein's intimate
+circle is a beautiful break in the mists of centuries--and shows us what
+manner of men they were among whom he had made for himself an honoured
+place. We could ill spare it from the few and meagre records of his
+life. It is also the very earliest documentary evidence of his being in
+the King's immediate service.
+
+It was in this very year, 1536, that he received his commission to paint
+Anne Boleyn's successor, Jane Seymour, then on the throne the block
+had left vacant. The Vienna Gallery possesses this painting, of which
+another version is at Woburn Abbey, and the chalk drawing at Windsor
+(Plate 30).
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 30
+  QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR
+ _Oils. Vienna Gallery_
+
+The Queen was noted for her milk-white fairness, and Holbein has
+borrowed the pearly shadows of the lily in rendering it. The figure is a
+little under life-size. Her head-dress and robes of silver brocade and
+royal velvet are studded with splendid rubies and pearls to match the
+jewels on her neck and breast. The hands are as full of character as of
+art.
+
+The Queen's portrait may properly be said to belong to the great wall
+painting which Holbein finished in 1537 for the Royal Palace at Whitehall.
+But before that date the painter's inner life had suffered one more
+great wrench. At midnight of July 12th, 1536, Erasmus died in the home
+that had been his own, except for the Freiburg interval, ever since John
+Froben's death in 1526; a death that had probably had much to do with
+Holbein's first departure from Basel. That event had uprooted the
+scholar from the old house _zum Sessel_, in the Fischmarkt, and
+transplanted him to the home of Froben's son, Hieronymus. The latter
+house, then known as _zum Luft_, is now No. 18, Baeumleingasse. And it
+was here that Erasmus passed away, his mind keeping to the last its
+humour and its interests in all around him. But no one, remembering how
+Fisher and More had died in the preceding year, can doubt but that the
+good old man was very willing to be gone, away from changed faces and
+changed ways--though Bonifacius Amerbach and young Froben were as sons
+to him.
+
+Basel, for all her differences with him, buried Erasmus with great
+honours. But no tablet could so commemorate him as the noble monument
+which Holbein built to him in the title-page he designed for Hieronymus
+Froben's edition of Erasmus's _Works_, published in 1540. It is a
+woodcut of extraordinary beauty. The full-length figure of the scholar
+stands in cap and gown, with one hand resting lightly on the bust of
+the god Terminus (the god of immovable boundary lines, significantly
+conjoined to Erasmus's chosen motto: _Concedo nulli_) and the other
+calling attention to this significant emblem of fixed convictions. Not
+even the Louvre oil painting expresses the whole Erasmus quite so
+completely or so nobly as this little drawing of the man whom Holbein
+had loved and revered for twenty years; and to whom he owed, in the
+first place, the splendid opportunities of his career in England.
+
+And as he drew it, what ghosts of his own Past must have clustered
+around the lean little figure! What echoes and visions! The Rhine, the
+gardens, the clang of the press, the Fischmarkt, the friendly smiles at
+Froben's and Meyer's firesides; his marriage; the stars and dews and
+perfume of all his dreams in the years--those matchless years of a man's
+young manhood--when he had walked with angels as well as peasants, had
+seen the Way of the Cross, the Christ in the Grave, and the Risen Lord
+even more clearly than the faces of flesh and blood. _Eheu fugaces!_
+"God help thee, Elia, how art thou sophisticated."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ah, well! Those years, and the darker, sadder years that had led far
+from them, were now like his oldest friends--dead and buried. The
+Holbein of 1537 was painting the King of England on the wall of his
+Privy Chamber. There was a place for honest pride as well as for honest
+regret in his thoughts.
+
+This painting perished with the palace in the fire of 1698. Charles
+II., however, had a small copy of it made by Leemput. And a portion of
+Holbein's original cartoon (Plate 31) in chalk and Indian ink, is in
+the possession of the Duke of Devonshire--the face much washed out by
+cleaning, and the outline pricked for transferring to the wall. The
+figures are life-size, but Walpole has already noticed how the massive
+proportions and solidly-planted pose of the King heighten the illusion
+of a Colossus. Behind him stands the admirably contrasted figure of
+Henry VII. The whole composition consisted of four portraits; Queen
+Jane Seymour opposite her husband, and the King's mother opposite to,
+and on a level with, Henry VII., who stands on the elevation of the
+background.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 31
+  KING HENRY VIII AND HIS FATHER
+  (_Fragment of Cartoon used for the Whitehall Wall-Painting_)
+ _Duke of Devonshire's Collection_
+
+The pose and costume of Henry VIII. in the cartoon were, as Leemput's
+copy shows, faithfully carried out in the painting; but in the latter
+the face was afterwards turned to the full front view familiar to us in
+the many copies of the King's portrait which so long passed as works of
+Holbein, on the strength of reproducing his own painting. There is no
+evidence that he ever again painted Henry VIII. or that he executed
+any replica of this portrait. The old copy at Windsor Castle serves,
+however, to recall its details of costume; such as his brown doublet
+stiff with gold brocade and scintillating with the gleams of splendid
+jewels, his coat of royal red embroidered with gold thread and lined
+with ermine to match the wide collar; his plumed and jewelled cap; as
+also the huge gems on collar, pendant, rings, and the gold-hilted dagger
+in its blue velvet sheath.
+
+But Holbein's own portrait of Henry VIII.--as shown by the original
+chalk study from life now in the Munich Gallery (Plate 32)--may in
+all sobriety of speech be called a stupendous work. Looking at this
+marvellous drawing and picturing to one's self those cheeks informed
+with pulsing blood, those lips with breath, those eyes with blue
+gleams,--it is easy to understand that Van Mander was using no hyperbole
+when he said that the painting on the wall of the Privy Chamber made the
+stoutest knees to tremble. It was literally, as he said, "a terrible
+painting," of which none of the stupidly-heavy copies that have for the
+most part travestied Holbein's work give any true conception. Many a man
+could paint cloth-of-gold and gems; but only once and again in the
+centuries comes a man who can thus paint, not alone the mane and stride
+of the lion, but the fires that light his glance, the roar rushing to
+his lips. To look long into these eyes that Holbein had the genius to
+read and the firmness to draw, is to feel one's self in the grip of an
+insatiable, implacable, yet leonine soul; a being who, to borrow the
+matchless description of Burke's political career, is "parted asunder in
+his works like some vast continent severed by a convulsion of nature;
+each portion peopled by its own giant race of opinions, differing
+altogether in features and language, and committed in eternal hostility
+with one another." And so long as the great drama of Tudor England
+enthrals the minds of men, hard by Shakespeare's supreme name must be
+read the name of the painter in whose pages the actors in that drama
+have been compelled themselves to declare themselves.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 32
+  KING HENRY VIII
+  (_Life-study; probably for the Whitehall Painting_)
+ _Chalks. Munich Collection_
+
+To crown the King's pride, and to the no less intense delight of the
+whole nation which saw in this event the rainbow of every promise, at
+Hampton Court, on the 12th of October, 1537, Queen Jane Seymour gave
+birth to the son who was to reign so briefly as Edward VI. And it was
+doubtless in connection with this happy circumstance that the King
+commissioned Holbein's design for a truly royal piece of goldsmith's
+work. This drawing, generally known as "the Jane Seymour cup," is at
+Oxford, in the Bodleian Library (Plate 33).
+
+No sketch of the artist's powers would be even barely complete without a
+realising sense of their versatility. And in this design Holbein has more
+than equalled the highest achievement of his great contemporary, Benvenuto
+Cellini, at this time in the service of the French Court. The initials
+of the King and Queen, H. and J., and the exceedingly judicious motto of
+the latter--"Bound to obey and to serve"--are recurring devices. But it
+is in the originality and unflawed beauty of the whole--the springing
+grace of outline, the taste and cunning with which flowers of gold
+naturally bloom into gems and pearls, the combination of freest, richest
+fancy with every restraint of a pure taste--that the perfection of this
+little masterpiece consists.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 33
+  DESIGN FOR "THE JANE SEYMOUR CUP"
+ _Bodleian Library_
+
+In the midst of all the public rejoicings, the Te Deums, feasts, and
+bonfires, came the thunderclap of the young mother's death. Some
+negligence had permitted her to take cold, and on the twelfth day after
+his coveted heir was born, Henry VIII. was once again a widower. The
+Court went into deepest mourning until the 3rd of February. But Thomas
+Cromwell was very shortly authorised to take secret steps to ascertain
+what Princess might most suitably fill the late Queen's vacant place and
+strengthen the assurance of an unbroken succession.
+
+Choice fell at first on a Roman Catholic--Christina, the sixteen-year-old
+widow of Francis Sforza Duke of Milan, who had died in the autumn of
+1535. The upshot of private inquiries was that Holbein was sent over to
+Brussels in March, 1538, to bring back a portrait of this daughter of
+Christian of Denmark and niece of Charles V. And although the painter
+had but three hours in which to do it, he did make what Hutton described
+as her "very perffight" image; besides which, said the envoy, the
+portrait previously despatched, though painted in all her state finery,
+"was but slobbered."
+
+From this "perffight" painting, which could not have been more than one
+of his portrait studies, he afterwards completed that full-length oil
+painting which is worthy to rank with his great Morett portrait. By the
+kindness of the Duke of Norfolk, who has lent it, this beautiful work
+is now in the National Gallery (Plate 34). But unhappily for its best
+appreciation, to my thinking at least, it hangs at one side and in too
+close proximity to the bold colouring of "The Ambassadors"; so that its
+own subtle, yet reticent superiority is well-nigh shouted down by its
+lusty neighbour. It is a picture to be seen by itself; as it must stand
+by itself in the usual inane gallery of women's portraits.
+
+Hutton tells us that the painter who "slobbered" Christina's portrait
+had painted her in full dress. But Holbein's eye was quick to recognise
+the values of her everyday dress--the widow's costume of Italy--in
+enhancing the distinction of her face and the stately slenderness of her
+figure. And so he drew her as she stood, with a hint of bending
+forward, her gloves being restlessly fingered in a shy yet proud
+embarrassment, in the first moments when he saw her.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 34
+  CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN
+ _Oils. National Gallery_
+  [_Lent by the Duke of Norfolk_]
+
+The portrait is nearly life-size. Over a plain black satin dress she
+wears a gown of the same material, lined with yellow sable. Her hair is
+entirely concealed by a black hood. At her throat and wrists are plain
+cambric frills. The ranging scale of tawny tones--in the floor, the
+gloves, the fur, the golden glint in her brown eyes--and the one ruby,
+on her hand, are the only colours, except those of her fresh young lips
+and skin and the black and white of her costume. "She is not so white as
+the late Queen," wrote Hutton, "but she hath a singular good countenance,
+and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks
+and one in her chin, the which becometh her excellently well."
+
+It is easy to believe that they did, but her dimples did not chance for
+Henry VIII. Whether she really sent him, along with her picture, the
+witty refusal credited to her--that she had but one head; had she two,
+one should be at His Majesty's service--or whether it was the Emperor's
+doing entirely that his niece married the Duke of Lorraine instead of
+the man whose first wife had been Charles V.'s aunt, there is, at all
+events, a soft lurking devil in the demure little face which seems to
+whisper that the answer was one which she could have made an' she would.
+
+Van Mander heard from Holbein's circle a story which modern pedantry
+is inclined to flout. This is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the
+painter punished for an affront, the King hotly exclaimed:--"Understand,
+my lord, that I can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but
+out of seven earls I could not make one such painter as this Holbein."
+An eminently ben-trovato story, at all events. And certain it is that
+the painter stood sufficiently high in the royal favour to be despatched
+on some special private mission for the King in the summer of 1538, of
+which the secret was so well kept that nothing beyond the record of
+payment for it has ever transpired.
+
+From this date Holbein's name is regularly down in the Royal Accounts.
+The amounts drawn total, it has been computed, about L360 in present
+value, and would make an agreeable annual addition to his other
+earnings. So that it is little wonder he was not tempted by the small
+sum offered by the Basel Council in 1532. But in 1538 the Council
+greatly increased the old offer, and was so anxious to have him among
+her citizens that the painter seized the opportunity of his secret
+mission to Upper Burgundy, whatever it was, to pay a flying visit to
+Basel in the interests of his family.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His old companions of the Guild of St. Johann Vorstadt made this
+visit--when Holbein was back among them, as was noted, "in silk and
+velvet"--the occasion of a grand banquet in his honour. But the real
+motive for his visit was to arrange upon what terms he could meet the
+Council's wishes. The terms were far from ungenerous, as is shown by the
+contract which followed him back to London.
+
+In this the Council bound itself, in consideration of the great honour
+of retaining in their city a painter "famous beyond all other painters
+on account of the riches of his art," and in further consideration of
+his promise to make no absence from Basel more prolonged than should be
+really necessary to carry his foreign commissions to their destination
+and receive his pay for them--to give him an annuity of fifty guldens,
+equally whether Holbein should be ill or well, but only during his own
+life. In addition to this, they granted him permission to make short
+visits to specified art-centres, of which Milan was one, "once, twice,
+or thrice, every year." And recognising the impossibility of his freeing
+himself from his English engagements in less than two years, they also
+granted him this interval before he need resume his residence at Basel;
+and engaged to pay forty guldens yearly to his wife, on his behalf, for
+each of these two years.
+
+There is every probability that Holbein himself took a goodly sum to
+Basel to invest for his family's permanent benefit in one way and
+another. For it could only have been as a part of this gleaning for
+them that he drew--as the Account Books show that he did just at this
+juncture--a whole year's salary in advance from the Royal Exchequer;
+seeing that the same books prove that he was liberally paid for all his
+own expenses on the King's service, in addition to his regular salary.
+
+Part of the sum he collected to take with him was doubtless used to
+apprentice his son Philip, now sixteen, to the goldsmith's trade. And
+that the father chose Paris for this purpose, where he left Philip on
+his return journey, might well be due either to his own estimation
+of Jerome David, to whom Philip was indentured, or to the fact that
+Benvenuto Cellini's presence at Paris afforded some advantage; or that
+his own promised return to Basel would make it preferable to have the
+lad on the same side of the Channel as all his family. And that Holbein
+fully intended to make the necessary and obvious sacrifice involved in
+exchanging London for Basel is also proved by a contemporary account.
+"His intention was," says his fellow-townsman, "had God lengthened his
+life, to paint many of his pictures again at his own expense, as well as
+the hall in the Rathaus. The paintings on the _Haus zum Tanz_ he
+pronounced 'pretty good.'" But it was not to be.
+
+His New Year's offering to the King on the opening of 1539 was a
+portrait, probably the oil painting in the Hague Gallery, of the infant
+Prince of Wales. It was a spirited picture of the royal baby with his
+gold rattle in his chubby little fist, such as might have delighted a
+father less doting than Henry VIII., whose return gift is recorded: "To
+Hans Holbyne, paynter, a gilte cruse with a cover, weighing x oz. 1
+quarter." The cruse was made by a friend of the painter; that Cornelius
+Hayes, goldsmith, whom Bourbon's letter mentioned in connection with him
+in 1536.
+
+All these months the negotiations for the hand of the Duchess of Milan
+had fluctuated with the varying fortunes of the King's relations with
+her uncle, Charles V. But at last they had altogether collapsed with
+what seemed to Henry VIII. the threatening attitude assumed by the
+Emperor and the Pope. Hereupon followed that historical chapter, so full
+of fatal consequences to Cromwell, and no less big with shame for the
+King's own story: the pitiful chapter of Anne of Cleves.
+
+Her brother, the Duke of Cleves, was at this time a troublesome foe to
+the Emperor; while the fact that she was a Protestant was a "Roland"
+for the Imperial and Papal "Oliver." So Holbein was again posted off to
+bring back a counterfeit of Anne, and to carry to her a miniature of the
+King. And by the 1st September he had acquitted himself of the new
+mission.
+
+There is not an iota of historical or other evidence for that "Flanders
+mare" anecdote, which seems to have had a gratuitous as well as
+spontaneous origin in Bishop Burnet's seventeenth-century brain, to the
+effect that the King was the victim of a flattering portrait by Holbein,
+and cruelly undeceived by the actual looks of his bride. In the first
+place his agents wrote to him frankly that the Princess was of no great
+beauty, though not uncomely, and "never from the ellebowe of the Ladye
+Duchesse her Mother," who was said to be most unwilling to part with her
+(as a mother might well be, for the husband in question). The King was
+also told that she was quite unskilled in languages or music, and
+held, with her mother, that it was "for a rebuke and an occasion of
+lightenesse that great Ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of
+musike." And in the next place even a superficial knowledge of Holbein
+would disprove any tradition of "flattery" from his unflinching, almost
+brutally truthful brush. It was hardly likely that the painter who would
+not stoop to flatter Bishop Stokesley, or Henry VIII. himself, would be
+swerved from his good faith by Anne of Cleves.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 35
+  ANNE OF CLEVES
+ _Oils. The Louvre_
+
+On the contrary, the painting, in oils on vellum and mounted on a panel,
+now in the Louvre (Plate 35), is the very embodiment of contemporary
+accounts of this Princess. Her fair-skinned, commonplace, yet "not
+uncomely" face looks out placidly at you from the quaint Flemish
+head-dress of fine gauze and jewelled cloth-of-gold. Her inert hands
+(Holbein's hands belong to his truth-telling revelations), jewelled
+even on the thumb, are listlessly clasped upon each other; her
+crimson-velvet dress is heavily banded with gold and pearl embroidery.
+
+No Venus certainly, and perhaps somewhat heavily handicapped by the
+maternal "elbowe." But still perfectly in keeping with her descriptions
+and making no denial to the French Ambassador's statement that she was
+"the gentlest and kindest" of queens; or to an English eye-witness who
+writes that at her coronation the people all applauded her for being "so
+fayre a Ladye, of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance, and
+in especial of so good qualities."
+
+The fact is that the King's very cruelty to this poor girl--torn from
+her mother's side and her Protestant home in Duerren to be the pawn of an
+unscrupulous diplomacy--was based on grounds, at least, less infamous
+than that of a slave-buyer. After both Cromwell and Holbein had been
+well rewarded for their services, the former lost his head and the Queen
+her crown on considerations that took no more account of her looks than
+her feelings. The Catholic glass had risen; the King himself was not
+ashamed to avow it; and the Protestant alliance was therefore an
+incubus. After some two months of a queen's and wife's estate, poor
+Anne of Cleves was bid to pack her belongings and take up a separate
+establishment as an unmarried woman. No wonder she fainted when first
+informed of such an infamy.
+
+But there was no law in England save the _fiat_ of Henry VIII. The
+marriage was pronounced "null and void," and Anne retired into private
+life, on the rigid condition that she would make no attempt to ever quit
+England, with an allowance of L3,000 a year, and the formal title of the
+King's "sister." There was no help for her. Never again for her would
+there be the austere joys of Duerren--her mother's side, her own timid
+dreams of other companionship, and never the price at which she had lost
+them.
+
+At the head of the triumphant anti-Protestant, anti-Cromwell party stood
+Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, whose portrait, in the Royal
+Collection at Windsor, Holbein painted about this time (Plate 36). The
+lean face and the figure clothed in red stand out strikingly from the
+plain green background, although the painting has suffered not a little
+injury. The robe is lined and trimmed with ermine, and over it is the
+collar and badge of the Order of the Garter. In his right hand he holds
+the gold baton of his office as Earl Marshal, and in his left the White
+Staff of the Lord Chamberlain.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 36
+  THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK
+ _Oils. Windsor Castle_
+
+According to Roper, Norfolk, then Earl of Surrey, was a great friend of
+Sir Thomas More. But it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than
+the records of the two men. The latter a pattern of personal purity and
+lofty ideals; the former as venal as the King's Parliaments, and as
+unscrupulous in pursuit of his passions as the King himself.
+
+Norfolk's star of influence had already waxed and waned with the evil
+destinies of one niece, before it arose anew with the fortunes of
+another only to plunge sharply after them into the gulf of ruin. For the
+present he and Gardiner, restored to favour with him, were all-powerful.
+Their calculations seemed to prosper, too, beyond their most ambitious
+dreams, when, instead of ruling through a rival to Anne who should be
+the King's mistress, they were to rule through a legal successor. For
+the King was nothing if not technically correct; and from the moment
+when the fatal royal glance flamed on Catherine Howard when Gardiner was
+entertaining him, nothing would do but she should become his wife. And
+thus once more the wild wheel of Fortune was to make Norfolk uncle to a
+Queen of England.
+
+Anne was divorced on the 12th of July, 1540, and on the 28th of the
+same month, on the very day when Thomas Cromwell was beheaded, the King
+married Anne Boleyn's cousin, Catherine Howard. On the 8th of August she
+was proclaimed Queen, and on the 15th of that month she was publicly
+prayed for as such in all the churches of the realm. Well might she be!
+Dry your outraged tears, Anne of Cleves, and give thanks to God that you
+are well out of it!
+
+There is a miniature in the Windsor Collection now believed to be
+Holbein's portrait of Catherine Howard. Until recently it was held to be
+the portrait of Catherine Parr. But there is a larger portrait of the
+former among the Windsor drawings, a study evidently made for an oil
+painting (Plate 37). By this it seems that she had auburn hair, hazel
+eyes, a fair complexion, and a piquant smile. There is a painting which
+accords with this drawing in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection, but it
+is said to be by a French artist.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 37
+  CATHERINE HOWARD
+ _Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle_
+
+In the autumn of this year, 1540, the two years of absence expired which
+had been granted to Holbein by his contract with the Basel Council. But
+he had now formed ties which were too powerful to yield to Basel's.
+Those plans of painting again the walls by which coming generations
+would judge him, the resolve to try again if he and Elsbeth might not
+manage to live in peace under one roof where the children, who were
+strangers to him, should come to know and be known by him in something
+more than name, were all relinquished. They must certainly have
+been relinquished on some definite mutual understanding, and at a
+"compensation" agreed upon between him and Elsbeth and his step-son,
+Franz Schmidt; because it must have been Holbein himself who enabled
+Franz, acting on his mother's behalf, to take over as he did the entire
+legacy--a snug little competency in itself--to which Holbein fell heir
+in this autumn by the bequest of his uncle, Sigmund Holbein, citizen of
+Berne. Philip having been launched by his father in the goldsmith's
+craft, there only remained the second son and two daughters at home.
+Thus so far as mere money went, Holbein might now think himself
+discharged from the support of his family, and free to divert his future
+earnings from them. And, as has been said, the Will and Inventory proved
+at Elsbeth's death, six years after her husband's, that he had made no
+bad provision for them in the matter of material comforts, however
+remiss his conduct in its moral aspects.
+
+The Royal Accounts break off in 1541, but the Subsidy Roll for the City
+of London has a very precious item for Holbein's biography in the
+October of this year. This announces that "Hanns Holbene" is among the
+"straungers" then residing in "the Parisshe of Saint Andrew Undershafte,"
+and that he is assessed as such.
+
+Not only the Windsor chalk drawings, but the paintings at Vienna,
+Berlin, and other Continental galleries, show the pressure, as well as
+the high level of quality, at which he was now working. These portraits
+are among almost his very best, while the one shortly to be mentioned is
+quite among them.
+
+By the summer of 1542 the tragedy of Catherine Howard was over. That
+Royal Progress, like more than one of its forerunners, had become the
+royal shame. This time it was a shame so black and so wide that within
+two years, after madness and death had purged the complicity of many,
+there still remained so many more involved in the sins and follies of
+Norfolk's niece that the ordinary prisons were unable to contain all
+that were arraigned; a shame so bitter that when the proofs of it were
+first laid before Henry VIII. the Privy Council quaked to see him shed
+tears. It was, they said with awe, "a strange thing in his courage!"
+The guilty woman had her own tears to shed in expiation; but in the
+dawn of February 12th, 1542, she walked to the block as full of wilful,
+cheerful audacity, and as careful of her toilet, as she had ever gone to
+meet her royal lover. And so the auburn head of the King's fifth wife
+rolled from the axe that had severed her guilty cousin's.
+
+On July 12th, 1543, the "next" year as it then began, the King married
+Catherine Parr. She had been twice widowed and was about to marry Sir
+Thomas Seymour when the King interfered, and she became his wife
+instead; though one can well credit the story that she tremblingly
+told him, "It were better to be his mistress." She was a good woman, a
+generous stepmother, and a good wife. But there is plenty of probability
+for the assertion that her own death had been debated with the King when
+her wit delayed it, and his death set her free to marry at last the man
+from whom the King had snatched her.
+
+It was formerly believed, as has been said, that Holbein had painted
+her miniature--the one at Windsor, now declared to be the portrait
+of Catherine Howard. About this time he must have painted the great
+portrait of which mention has been made. This is the oil portrait of
+Dr. Chamber, the King's physician, now in the Vienna Gallery (Plate 38).
+The sitter was, as the inscription shows, eighty-eight years old; and
+the strong, stern face is full of that "inward" look which comes to
+the faces of men whose meat and drink has been a lifetime of heavy
+responsibilities. He had been associated with the Charter of the College
+of Physicians in 1518, and was also instrumental in that of the Guild of
+"Barbers and Surgeons," in 1541. And it was probably through him and Dr.
+Butts, another physician to the King whom Holbein had painted and who
+was likewise a Master of the new Guild, that he undertook to paint a
+large work for their hall--Henry VIII. granting their Charter to the
+Master-Surgeons kneeling before him.
+
+  Illustration: PLATE 38
+  DR. CHAMBER
+ _Oils. Vienna Gallery_
+
+This work Holbein did not live to finish; and it is to-day exceedingly
+doubtful as to how much of the smoke-blackened painting is by him. The
+very drawing has a woodenness foreign to his compositions, and much of
+the painting is by an evidently inferior hand. But good judges hold some
+of the heads to be undoubtedly his work.
+
+However this may be, with the autumn of 1543 Holbein's life came to a
+sudden close. Van Mander, wrong as to the date by eleven years which
+have fathered a host of spurious _Holbeins_ on the Histories of Art, is
+apparently right as to the cause of death--"the Plague." By the great
+discovery of Hans Holbein's Will, found by Mr. Black in 1861 among the
+archives of St. Paul's Cathedral, it is proved that the painter made his
+Will on October 7th, and must have died between this and November 29th,
+1543, when administration was granted to one of his executors (the other
+would seem to have perished, meanwhile, from the same epidemic). This
+surviving executor was an old friend of the artist, whose portrait,
+in the Windsor Gallery, he had painted eleven years before--Hans of
+Antwerp, a master-goldsmith of the Steelyard.
+
+The Will bears about it evident signs of having been made in great haste
+and mental disturbance. But it accomplished all that Holbein probably
+had at heart; that is, the ensuring that whatsoever moneys could be
+collected from his accounts, or by the sale of "all my goodes and also
+my horse," should first be applied to clear a couple of specified debts,
+and the rest be managed for the sole benefit of "my two chylder which
+be at nurse." From the very fact that nothing as to the identity or
+whereabouts of these babies is mentioned, it is clear that Holbein
+relied on the verbal instructions which he had given to his trusted
+friends and to their complete understanding of all the circumstances as
+well as of his wishes. He was only concerned, apparently, that such
+small means as could thus be saved for them should not be permitted to
+pass to his legal heirs.
+
+No other heirs are mentioned; no other legacy is made. From the Will
+alone one who did not know otherwise would suppose that he had no
+other family or relatives in existence. The Plague left no man in its
+neighbourhood much leisure for explanations. Stowe records that the one
+of that autumn was such "a great death" that the Law Courts had to be
+transferred to St. Albans. But two things seem to speak in this curt
+document. First, that by the transference of his uncle Sigmund's little
+fortune to Franz Schmidt (as trustee for Elsbeth and the children of her
+marriage with Holbein), which the archives prove took place three years
+earlier, and by his other arrangements for his family at Basel and for
+Philip at Paris, Holbein held himself free of any further responsibility
+for their support, and, indeed, determined that they should not obtain
+possession of the residue in London.
+
+Secondly, that if the mother of his two illegitimate children had lived
+with him in London as his wife, she must have just died--perhaps in
+childbed, perhaps of the Plague. She is not in any way referred to.
+And there is something in the very signs of confusion and distress
+throughout the wording of the Will which seems to exhale a far-away
+anguish--sudden parting, sad apprehensions, keenest anxiety for "my two
+chylder which be at nurse." There comes before the eye a picture of
+the five grave men--Holbein, his two executors, the one a goldsmith,
+the other an armourer, and his two witnesses, a "merchaunte" and a
+"paynter"--hurrying along the plague-infected streets to get this
+document legalised as some protection for two motherless babies, in the
+event of their father's death. No man knew whose turn would come within
+the hour.
+
+And by November 29th Holbein's had come, and one executor's also,
+apparently. The Latin record of administration on this date is that it
+has been consigned to John Anwarpe (Johann or Hans of Antwerp), and
+accepted by him in accordance with "the last will of John, alias Hans
+Holbein, recently deceased in the parish of Saint Andrew Undershaft."
+
+It would seem probable, then, that the painter was buried in this church
+rather than in the closely adjoining church of Saint Catharine-Cree to
+which tradition assigned his body. But the horrors of such an epidemic
+as that in which the painter was swept suddenly away make it easy to
+understand how even such a man as he had now become could die unnoticed
+and be buried in an unrecorded grave. When the Earl of Arundel, a few
+years later, sought to learn where he might set up a monument to one he
+so greatly admired, there was only this vague and uncorroborated rumour
+that the painter was buried in Saint Catharine-Cree. And so no monument
+was built to mark the spot where Holbein's "measure of sliding sand" had
+been spilled at last.
+
+But, as they ran, those sands had measured more than "_a great
+portrait-painter_." They had measured Greatness; greatness which is not
+to be delimited by the wanton outrages of man or the accidents of time.
+Both have had their share in the judgments of generations that have lost
+all his greatest and nearly all his imaginative creations. And what
+the Spoiler has spared, the self-styled Restorer has too often ruined.
+Self-love, on the other hand, and family pride have been engaged to
+preserve those portraits by which it is now the fashion to mulct him of
+his far larger dues.
+
+Of his mysticism, of the symbolism in which his "Journal Intime" is
+written in his own firm cipher, this little book is not the place to
+speak; though for those who have once come to know the true Holbein
+these have a spell, a stern, inexhaustible enchantment all their own.
+
+But study the few fortunate survivals of his imaginative works, study
+even more the wrecks and skeletons of his loftier conceptions, and ask
+yourself if it could be by only a quick eye and a clever hand (and he
+had both, assuredly) that Holbein caught up the dying ember of the Van
+Eycks' torch and fanned it by his originality, his fancy, his winged
+realism, until its light lit up the dim ways of Man with a clairvoyance
+far beyond theirs. This eye, this mind, flung its gleaming penetration
+into every covert of the soul and deep, deep, deep into the most
+shrouded, the most shuddering secrets of Mortality.
+
+Was it by virtue of a mere portrait-painter's powers that the son of
+the Augsburg Bohemian came to lay his finger upon the very core and
+composition of perhaps the haughtiest, the subtlest, the most dread
+despot since the Caesars? Henry VIII. and Fisher; the Lais Corinthiaca,
+the Duchess of Milan, his brooding wife; dancing children, and dancing
+Death; Christ on the Cross, Christ in the Grave, Christ Arisen; lambs in
+the fields, woods and hills, gaping peasants, wild battle;--put them
+side by side, the poor ghosts of them left to us, and compute the range
+of art--"the majestic range" that framed them all.
+
+Let us be just. Let us forget for a moment the chirp of the family
+housekeeper over her gods. Let us gather up the broken fragments that
+are more than the meal, and humbly own the Miracle that created them.
+It is idle to argue with the intelligence that can see "a want of
+imagination" in Holbein. But we can find proof and to spare that it
+is not so; that his so-called "limitations"--apart from method, which
+is a matter of Epoch--are due to a creed we may or may not agree with,
+but surely must respect. The creed that Beauty is the framework, the
+ornament, rather than the substance of things; the pleasure, not the
+purpose of "this mortal"; and that the sweetest flower that blows is but
+an exquisite moment of transfigured clay.
+
+He smells the mould above the rose; yet how he draws the rose! The
+brazen arrogance of pomp, the pearl on a woman's neck, the shimmer of a
+breaking bubble, the wrinkles in a baby's foot, the beauty of life, the
+pathos of life, the irony and the lust of life,--he has painted them
+all, as he saw them all, in the phantasmagoric Procession of Being
+betwixt garret and throne.
+
+He has painted each, too, with that genius for seizing the essential
+quality which _is_ the thing, that never forsook him from Augsburg to
+Saint Andrew's Undershaft; that singular, vivid, original genius which
+can well afford to let his grave be forgotten, whose works build for
+him, as Hans Holbein--
+
+   _One of the few, the immortal names
+    That were not born to die._
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES.
+
+ 1: The name used thus, without further identification, is to be taken
+ throughout these pages to mean Hans Holbein the _Younger_.
+
+ 2: Variously written Meyer, Meier, Mejer, Meiger, or Megger. Baer is also
+ written _Ber_, or _Berin_.
+
+ 3: I am deeply indebted to the personal kindness and trouble of Sir
+ Martin Gosselin, K.C.M.G., British Minister at the Court of Portugal,
+ for greatly facilitating my own study of this interesting picture.
+
+ 4: I am indebted to the personal kindness of the discoverer's son, Herr
+ Direktor Zetter-Collin of the Solothurn Museum, for these details. But
+ the whole story, as well as Herr Zetter-Collin's contributions to the
+ history of the work, should be read in his own absorbingly interesting
+ monograph:--"_Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn. (...) Ihre
+ Geschichte, etc._" 1902.
+
+ 5:
+   _"Die Liebe zu Gott Heist charite.
+     Wer Liebe hat der Tragt kein Hass."_
+
+
+
+
+A CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL
+EXISTING WORKS OF
+HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
+
+ARRANGED, SO FAR AS CAN BE KNOWN,
+IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE
+
+ ** signifies--_Superlative qualities._
+
+  * signifies--_Of some particular importance._
+
+  ? signifies--_Authorities differ._ Held by some (and by the writer)
+                to have been, in its original condition, the work of
+                Holbein's own hand.
+
+
+I.
+
+EARLIEST INDIVIDUAL WORKS (BEFORE GOING TO BASEL)
+
+ ? St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Barbara. Oils. (Wings of the St.
+   Sebastian altar-piece.) Munich Gallery.
+
+   Virgin and Child. Oils. Basel Museum. (Earliest signed work known.
+   Dated 1514.)
+
+
+II.
+
+ FIRST BASEL PERIOD
+ (1515, 1516, 1519-1526)
+
+   Illustrations to Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_.
+   Eighty-two pen-and-ink sketches on the margins.
+   Original copy, Basel Museum.
+
+   Portrait of an unknown young man.
+   Oils. Grand-Ducal Museum, Darmstadt.
+
+   Jacob Meyer _zum Hasen_ and his second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser.
+   [Plates 4 and 5.] Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+   Bonifacius Amerbach. [Plate 6.] Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+   Portrait of himself. [Frontispiece.] Coloured Chalks. Basel Museum.
+
+ * Studies from Nature. (A bat outspread and a lamb.)
+   Drawings in water-colour and silver-point. Basel Museum.
+
+   Designs for armorial windows. (More especially those
+   with _Landsknechte_ and one with three peasants gossiping.)
+   Washed Drawings. Basel Museum and Print Cabinet, Berlin.
+
+  _Landsknechte_ in a hand-to-hand fight. [Plate 7.]
+   Washed Drawing. Basel Museum. Others in various collections.
+
+   Design for the wings of an organ-case.
+   Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.
+
+   Head of St. John the Evangelist.
+   Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+   The Last Supper. (On wood; ruined fragment.)
+   Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+   The Nativity [Plate 8.] and The Adoration. Oils.
+   Freiburg Cathedral. (Wings of a lost altar-piece.)
+
+   Holy Family. Washed Drawing. Basel Museum.
+   (Also other drawings of the Virgin and Child.)
+
+   The Passion. Eight-panelled altar-piece. [Plate 9.]
+   Oils. Basel Museum. (Utterly ruined by over-painting.)
+
+ * The Passion. A series of ten designs for glass-painting.
+   Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.
+   (A set of seven reversed impressions in the British Museum.)
+
+   The Man of Sorrows and the Mater Dolorosa.
+   Oils, in tones of brown. Basel Museum.
+
+   Christ borne to the ground by the weight of the cross.
+   A Washed Drawing and a * Woodcut (unique impression).
+   Basel Museum.
+
+ * Christ in the grave. [Plate 10.]
+   Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+ ? The risen Christ and Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre. [Plate 11.]
+   Oils. Hampton Court Gallery. (Very much injured.)
+
+   St. George. Oils. Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
+
+   St. Ursula. Oils. Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
+
+ ? Portrait of a young girl. [Plate 13.]
+   Drawing in chalk and silver-point. Jabach Collection. The Louvre.
+
+** The Solothurn Madonna. [Plate 12.]
+   Oils. Solothurn Museum. ("Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn,"
+   of which the remarkable history is given in the text; together
+   with the evident relationship of Plate 13 and the hypothesis of
+   the present writer in that connection.)
+
+** Portrait of Erasmus. [Plate 14.]
+   Oils. The Louvre.
+
+   A Citizen's Wife, and others, in the dress of the time.
+   Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.
+
+   The Table of Cebes. Border for title-page.
+   Woodcut. Royal Print Cabinet, Berlin.
+
+   St. Peter and St. Paul; on the title-page of Adam Petri's
+   reprint of Luther's translation of the New Testament.
+
+   Alphabet of "The Dance of Death." Woodcuts.
+   Proof-impressions in the Basel Museum, the British Museum,
+   and the Dresden Royal Collection.
+
+   Bible Pictures: illustrating Old Testament. Woodcuts.
+
+** "Images of Death." [Two shown at Plates 14 and 15.]
+   Proof-impressions, some sets incomplete, in the Basel Museum,
+   British Museum and the National Print Collections of Paris,
+   Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Karlsruhe, and the Bodleian Library.
+   (This is the immortal series of Woodcuts, often called
+   "The Dance of Death," done for the Trechsel Brothers of Lyons,
+   but not published there until many years later.)
+
+   Dorothea Offenburg as the Goddess of Love. [Plate 16.]
+   Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+   The above as Lais Corinthiaca.
+   Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+** The Meyer Madonna. [Plates 18 and 19.]
+   Oils. Grand-Ducal Collection, Darmstadt (superbly restored);
+   and ?Dresden Gallery. (Notwithstanding the many and eminent
+   authorities who hold this to be a copy, there still remain
+   a sufficiency of no less eminent authorities to warrant the
+   present writer in her unshaken opinion that, at any rate in
+   its first estate and in the main, this Dresden version--revered
+   for more than one century as such by the highest authorities--was
+   the creation of Holbein's own hand.)
+
+
+III.
+
+FIRST LONDON PERIOD
+(1526-1528)
+
+   Portrait of Sir Thomas More.
+   Oils. Mr. Huth's Collection.
+   Chalk Drawing at Windsor. [Plate 20.]
+   (Also a drawing of Sir John More, father of the above.)
+
+** John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. [Plate 21.]
+   Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle. (Another in the British Museum.)
+
+   Archbishop Warham.
+   Oils. The Louvre, and Lambeth Palace.
+
+ ? John Stokesley, Bishop of London.
+   Oils. Windsor Castle.
+
+   Sir Henry Guildford. [Plate 22.]
+   Oils. Windsor Castle.
+
+   Lady Guildford.
+   Oils. Mr. Frewen's Collection.
+
+   Sir Thomas Godsalve and his son John.
+   Oils. Dresden Gallery.
+
+   Chalk Drawing of Sir John Godsalve.
+   Windsor Castle.
+
+   Nicholas Kratzer, Astronomer Royal to King Henry VIII. [Plate 23.]
+   Oils. The Louvre.
+
+   Sir Henry Wyat. Oils. The Louvre.
+
+   Sir Bryan Tuke, Treasurer of the Household to King Henry VIII.
+   Oils. Munich Gallery. [Plate 24.]
+   Also at Grosvenor House. (As stated in the text, the writer holds
+   that the portraits of Sir Bryan Tuke should properly be classed
+   with those of a later period. But they are given here in accordance
+   with opinions which obtain at present.)
+
+
+IV.
+
+LAST BASEL PERIOD
+(1528-1531)
+
+** Portrait group of Holbein's wife, Elsbeth, and his two eldest children.
+   [Plate 25.] Oils, on paper.
+   Basel Museum. (Outline hard from having been cut out and mounted.)
+
+   King Rehoboam replying to his people, and
+** Samuel denouncing Saul. [Plate 26.]
+   Two Washed Drawings. Basel Museum. (These are the designs for "the
+   back wall" of the Basel Council Chamber.)
+
+  "Portrait of an English Lady" (unknown).
+   Chalk Drawing. Basel Museum.
+
+** Portrait of an unknown young man in a broad-brimmed hat.
+   Chalk Drawing. Basel Museum.
+   (This is one of the most beautiful of Holbein's portrait studies. There
+   is a soft, yet virile, witchery about it which haunts the memory.)
+
+   Round Portrait of Erasmus. (Bust, 3/4 view.)
+   Oils. Basel Museum.
+
+   Designs for dagger-sheaths and other goldsmith's work.
+   Washed Drawings. Basel Museum, British Museum, etc.
+   (More especially the "Dance of Death"; a chef-d'oeuvre.)
+
+   A ship making sail.
+   Washed Drawing. Staedel Institut. Frankfurt.
+
+
+V.
+
+LAST PERIOD; LONDON
+(1531-43)
+
+** Portrait of Joerg Gyze. [Plate 27.]
+   Oils. Berlin Gallery.
+
+   Portrait of an unknown man.
+   Oils. Schoenborn Gallery, Vienna.
+
+   Johann or Hans of Antwerp.
+   Oils. Windsor Castle. (Holbein's friend and executor.)
+
+   Derich Tybis of Duisburg.
+   Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
+
+   Derich Born.
+   Oils. Munich Gallery, and Windsor Castle.
+
+   Derich Berck.
+   Oils. Petworth.
+
+   Unknown Man.
+   Oils. Prado Gallery, Madrid.
+
+   The Triumph of Riches.
+   Drawing. The Louvre.
+   (Copies of this and the pendant design, The Triumph of Poverty,
+   in the British Museum and in the Collection of Lady Eastlake.)
+
+   The Queen of Sheba before Solomon.
+   Washed Drawing, heightened with gold and colours. Windsor Castle.
+
+   Robert Cheseman, with falcon.
+   Oils. Hague Gallery.
+
+ * "The Ambassadors." [Plate 28.]
+   Oils. National Gallery.
+   (A double portrait, life size. Formerly supposed to be Sir Thomas
+   Wyatt and a scholar; now officially held to be Jean de Dinteville,
+   Bailli de Troyes, and George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. As stated
+   in the text, the present writer differs from any identification of
+   either figure yet published, but is not prepared to put forward her
+   own views for the present.)
+
+   Nicholas Bourbon de Vandoeuvre, scholar and poet.
+   Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
+   (An intimate friend of Holbein, Kratzer, and their circle. Recently
+   identified as the man in the scholar's gown, in "The Ambassadors,"
+   and so given by Mr. Lionel Cust, in the _Dictionary of National
+   Biography_, in his article upon Holbein.)
+
+**The Morett Portrait. [Plate 29.]
+   Oils. Dresden Gallery.
+   (Long believed to be a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art, and the
+   portrait of Ludovico Sforza, "Il Moro." At one time held to be Henry
+   Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Afterwards "established" and catalogued as
+   Hubert Morett, goldsmith to King Henry VIII. Following M. Larpent's
+   suggestion, however, it is now supposed to be the portrait of Charles
+   Solier, Sieur de Morette. But as to this the last word may yet remain
+   to be said. The drawing which the majority of authorities hold to be
+   the study for this painting now hangs near it.)
+
+   Thomas Cromwell.
+   Oils. Tittenhanger.
+
+** Miniature portrait of Henry Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk.
+   Windsor Castle.
+
+   Title-page used in Coverdale's Bible. Woodcut.
+
+   Q. Jane Seymour. [Plate 30.]
+   Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
+
+** Portrait of Erasmus, full length, in scholar's robes, with his hand
+   on the head of the god Terminus. Woodcut.
+   Frontispiece to Hieronymus Froben's edition of Erasmus's
+   Works, published in 1540.
+   (Commonly known as "Erasmus in a surround," or niche.)
+
+   Fragment of the Cartoon [Plate 31] used for the four royal portraits
+   in the wall-painting at Whitehall. The fragment shows only the figures
+   of King Henry VIII. and his father. Hardwick Hall.
+   (Remigius van Leemput's copy of the wall-painting shows that the
+   position of the King's head was changed, in the completed work, to the
+   full-face view so familiar in the oil-painting at Windsor Castle. The
+   latter is one of the many copies of Holbein's original portrait of
+   Henry VIII. which long passed muster as genuine _Holbeins_.)
+
+** Portrait study of the face of King Henry VIII. [Plate 32.]
+   Chalk Drawing. Royal Print Cabinet, Munich.
+   (Probably the Life-study for the Whitehall painting. If nothing
+   else remained, this mask alone would incontestably rank Holbein
+   among the Masters of all time. To the writer's thinking, at any
+   rate, it stands among the very few works of art which it would be
+   difficult to match, and impossible to surpass in its own colossal
+   qualities.)
+
+** Design for "the Jane Seymour Cup." [Plate 33.]
+   Bodleian Library.
+
+** Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan. [Plate 34.]
+   Oils. National Gallery; lent from Arundel Castle.
+
+   Edward VI., when infant Prince of Wales.
+   Oils. Hanover Gallery, and Lord Yarborough's Collection.
+
+   Anne of Cleves. [Plate 35.]
+   Oils on Vellum. The Louvre.
+
+   Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. [Plate 36.]
+   Oils. Windsor Castle, and Arundel Castle.
+
+   Catherine Howard. [Plate 37.]
+   Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
+   (The Miniature at Windsor Castle, formerly said to be Holbein's
+   portrait of Catherine Parr, is now said to be Catherine Howard. If
+   so, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile it with the drawing,
+   which latter seems much more in keeping with the descriptions of
+   her traits.)
+
+   Title-page used in Cranmer's Bible. Woodcut.
+   (This is the title-page from which Cromwell's Arms are erased in
+   the second edition.)
+
+   Sir Nicholas Carew.
+   Oils. Dalkeith Palace. Chalk Drawing. Basel Museum.
+
+   Simon George of Cornwall.
+   Oils. Staedel Institut, Frankfurt.
+
+   Miniature portrait of Charles Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk.
+   Windsor Castle.
+
+   Lady; unknown.
+   Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
+   Also a fine portrait of an unknown man.
+   Oils. Same Gallery.
+
+   Sir Richard Southwell.
+   Oils. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
+
+   John Reskymeer.
+   Oils. Hampton Court Gallery.
+
+   Nicholas Poyntz.
+   Oils. De la Rosiere Collection, Paris. Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
+
+   Sir John Russell.
+   Oils. Woburn Abbey. Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
+
+   Three portraits; men unknown.
+   Oils. Berlin Gallery.
+
+   Designs for jewelry, ornamental panels, clocks, chimney-piece,
+   etc., etc. Washed Drawings. British Museum, Basel Museum, etc.
+
+   Many fine portraits of which no versions in oils are known.
+   Chalk Drawings. Windsor Castle.
+   Among these one of Edward VI. as boy Prince of Wales, the Duchess of
+   Suffolk, Sir Thomas Wyatt, etc., etc.
+
+   Dr. John Chamber, or Chambers.
+   Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
+
+   Also many other oil-portraits, more or less genuine, in various
+   Collections.
+
+
+
+
+REFERENCES
+
+
+ The Literature of Holbein's Life, much more of his Works, is far too
+ extensive to admit of a Bibliography in a volume of this sort. But the
+ following List will be found to contain (or themselves refer the reader
+ to) all that is of essential importance to even the most complete study
+ of this Master.
+
+ Carel van Mander, _Het Schilder-Boeck_, etc., 1604.
+   The above translated into French, and admirably edited by
+   M. Henri Hyman. 2 tom., 1884.
+
+ Alfred Woltmann, _Holbein und seine Zeit. Zweite umgearbeitete
+   Auflage_, 1874. 2 Bde.
+   There is an English translation of the First Edition of 1871, by
+   F. E. Bunnett; but unfortunately its views on many vital points are
+   reversed by Woltmann himself in his latest edition.
+
+ R. N. Wornum, _Some Account of the Life and Works of Hans Holbein_, 1867.
+   Corrected in many respects by the author in a monograph on
+   "The Meier Madonna," 1891.
+
+ Paul Mantz, _Hans Holbein_. Paris, 1879.
+
+ H. Knackfuss, _Holbein_. Leipzig, 1899.
+   English translation of the above by Mr. Campbell Dodgson.
+
+ Eduard His, _Die Basler Archive ueber Hans Holbein den
+   Jungern_. In Zahn's _Jahrbuecher fuer Kunstwissenschaft_,
+   1870.
+
+ Francis Douce, _The Dance of Death_, 1833.
+
+ J. R. Smith, _Holbein's Dance of Death_, 1849.
+   (Especially fine reproductions.)
+
+ H. N. Humphreys, _Holbein's Dance of Death_, 1868.
+
+ G. Th. Fechner, _Ueber die Deutungsfrage der Holbein'schen Madonna._
+   _Die aelteste historische Quelle ueber die Holbein'sche Madonna_.
+   Both in _Archiv fuer die zeichnenden Kuenste_, 1866, I., 4.
+   These give all the known facts of the history of the Meyer Madonnas
+   of Darmstadt and Dresden.
+
+ S. Larpent, _Sur le portrait de Morett_. Christiania, 1881.
+
+ Mary F. S. Hervey, _Holbein's "Ambassadors,"_ 1900.
+   This volume also embodies, and gives the references to, the original
+   identifications of Professor Sidney Colvin, and the suggested
+   identifications of Mr. C. L. Eastlake; as well as to the contribution
+   concerning the hymn-book by Mr. Barclay Squire.
+
+ W. F. Dickes, _Holbein's "Ambassadors" Unriddled_, 1903.
+
+ F. A. Zetter-Collin, _Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn.
+   Ihre Geschichte aus Originalquellen_, etc.
+   In _Festschrift des Kunst-Vereins der Stadt Solothurn_, 1902.
+
+ Artur Seeman, _Der Brunnen des Lebens, von H. Holbein_.
+   In _Zeitschrift fuer bildende Kunst_. Mai, 1903.
+   With a superb illustration in colour.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+ "Adoration," painting, 71
+ "Ambassadors, The," painting, 145-9, 193
+ Amerbach, Basilius, 66
+   Bonifacius, 25, 46-50, 99, 125
+   Johann, 48, 61
+ Anne, of Cleves, Queen, 171-4
+ Antwerp, Johann or Hans of, 183
+ Arundel, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of, 184
+   Thomas Howard, Earl of, 151
+   William Fitzalan, Earl of, 115
+ Augsburg, 10, 11, 16
+
+ Baer, Hans, 24, 25
+   Magdalena, first wife of Meyer zum Hasen, 31
+ Barber-Surgeons, Guild of, 180
+ Basel, description of, 58-64
+   decoration of the Rathhaus by Holbein, 83-5, 132, 135, 170
+   decoration of the Laellenkoenig by Holbein, 135
+   offers of an annuity to Holbein, 145, 168, 169, 176, 177
+ Basel, banquet to Holbein, 168
+ Beatus Rhenanus, 68
+ Berne, 12
+ Bible, translations before the Reformation, 23, 24
+ Boleyn, Anne, Queen, 150, 151
+ Bourbon, Nicholas, 156, 157, 193
+ Bourges, 99
+ Burgkmair, Hans, 11
+ Butts, Sir William, 180
+
+ Cellini, Benvenuto, 169-70
+ Chamber, John, 180
+ Cheseman, Robert, 150
+ "Christ in the Grave," painting, 78-80
+ Christ in Holbein's Art, 77-83
+ Christina, Duchess of Milan, 144, 164-7
+ Colet, John, Dean of St. Paul's, 22, 137
+ Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex, 152
+
+ "Dance of Death," 100-103
+ Darmstadt, "Meyer-Madonna" at, 108-13
+ David, Gerard, 53
+ David, Jerome, 169
+ Diesbach, Nicholas von, 89, 90
+ Dinteville, Jean de, 149
+ Dresden, "Meyer-Madonna" at, 108-13
+ Duerer, Albrecht, 22
+
+ Edward VI., King, 163, 170
+ Elizabeth of York, Queen, 161
+ Erasmus, Desiderius, 17-21, 125, 137, 158
+   Portraits of, 98, 99, 159
+ Eyck, H. and J. van, 15, 185
+
+ Faesch, Remigius, 111
+ Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, 118
+ "Fountain of Life," painting, 53, 54
+ Froben, Hieronymus, 158
+ Froben, Johann, 15, 34, 35, 63, 64, 68, 98
+
+ Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, 175
+ Gerster, Hans, 89, 90
+ Glass-painting, designs for, 54, 55
+ "Goddess of Love," painting, 104
+ Gold-work, designs for, 163
+ Graf, Urs, 65, 66
+ Guildford, Sir Henry, 119-21
+   Lady, 121
+ Gyze, Georg, 142-43
+
+ Hayes, Cornelius, 170
+ Henry VII., King, portrait, 161
+ Henry VIII., King, portrait, 160-63, 195
+   New Year present to Holbein, 170
+ Henry, Prince of Wales, 151
+ Hertenstein, Jacob von, 43
+ Holbein, Ambrose, 10, 12, 13, 17
+   Bruno, 12
+   Elsbeth, 58, 94-7, 104, 105, 107, 126-9, 177-82
+   Hans, the Elder, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 91
+     the Younger, birth (1497), 16
+       at Basel (1515-17), 24
+       at Lucerne (1517-18), 41, 42
+       a citizen of Basel (1519-26), 58-113
+       marriage, 58
+       wife and children, 104-7, 124, 129-31, 169, 170, 182
+       first visit to England (1526-8), 115-25
+       last years in Basel (1528-31), 125-36
+       purchase of Basel House (1528), 125, 126
+       final return to London (1531), 136
+       mention of, by Nicholas Bourbon, 157
+       official income, 167
+       will and death, 180-83
+       place of interment, 184
+       illegitimate children, 183
+       as a designer and engraver, 35-7
+       greatness of, 184-7
+       religious ideals and sympathies, 21-4, 77-83
+   Jacob, 128-30
+   Katharina, 128-31
+   Kuenegoldt, wife of Andreas Syff, 129-31
+   Michael, 11
+   Philip, son of Hans the Younger, 86, 94, 129, 169, 170
+   Philip, grandson of Hans the Younger, 130
+   Sigmund, 12, 177
+ Howard, Catherine, Queen, 175
+   Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, 175
+ Hutten, Ulrich von, 71
+ Hyss, Cornelius, 157
+
+ "Jane Seymour Cup," 163
+
+ Kratzer, Nicholas, 121, 122, 157
+
+ Lais Corinthiaca, painting, 105, 106
+ Landsknechte, drawings, 57, 58
+ "Last Supper," paintings, 50-52
+ Leemput, Remi von, 160
+ Leonardo da Vinci, 40, 50
+ Lisbon, painting, the "Fountain of Life" at, 53, 54
+ Lucerne, 41, 42
+ Luetzelburger, Hans, 36, 98
+ Lystrius, Gerard, 68
+
+ Mantegna, Andrea, 40, 41, 50
+ "Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre," painting, 80-83
+ Merian, family of, at Frankfurt, 131
+ Meyer, Anna, 110, 111
+   Dorothea, nee Kannegiesser, 31-4, 109
+   Jacob zum Hasen, 31-4, 75, 89, 107
+   Jacob zum Hirten, 132, 133
+   Magdalena, nee Baer, 31
+ "Meyer-Madonna" (Darmstadt and Dresden), 108-13
+ Milan, 40
+ Monasticism and Art, 5-8
+ More, Sir Thomas, 112, 114-17, 137
+ Morett, Hubert, or Morette, Charles de Solier, portrait, 144, 154, 194
+
+ "Nativity," paintings, 71-4
+
+ Oberriedt, Hans, 72, 75
+ Oporinus, Joannes, 67, 68
+
+ Paracelsus, 67
+ Parr, Catherine, 176, 179
+ Passion, eight-panelled altar-piece, 75-77
+   drawings, 77, 78
+ Plague (in 1543), 182
+
+ Saint Andrew Undershaft, London, 178, 183, 184
+ Saint Catharine Cree, London, 184
+ Schmidt, Franz, 177, 182
+ Schoolmaster's Sign-board, paintings, 25, 26
+ Selve, Georges de, Bishop of Lavaur, 149
+ Seymour, Jane, Queen, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164
+ "Sheba, Queen of, visiting Solomon," drawing, 155
+ Solier, Charles de, Seigneur de Morette, 154
+ Solothurn Madonna, painting and its history, 86-97
+ Steelyard, the, London, 138-42
+ Stokesley, John, Bishop of London, 119
+ Sultz, Dorothea von, nee Offenburg, 104-6
+
+ Title-pages, woodcuts, 65, 98, 115, 159
+ "Triumph of Riches and of Poverty," drawings, 150
+ Tuke, Sir Bryan, 122, 123
+
+ Ulm, 11
+ Utopia, woodcut title-page, 115
+
+ "Virgin and Child," drawings, 55
+   paintings by Holbein, 86-97, 108-13
+
+ Warham, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 118, 119, 137
+ Wilhelm Meister, School of, 8
+ Windsor, portrait, drawings at, 117
+
+ Zetter, "Madonna" at Solothurn, 86-97
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE BOOKS ON ART
+
+_Demy 16mo. 2s. 6d. net._
+
+
+=SUBJECTS=
+
+MINIATURES. Alice Corkran
+BOOKPLATES. Edward Almack
+GREEK ART. H. B. Walters
+ROMAN ART. H. B. Walters
+THE ARTS OF JAPAN. Mrs. C. M. Salwey
+JEWELLERY. C. Davenport
+CHRIST IN ART. Mrs. H. Jenner
+OUR LADY IN ART. Mrs. H. Jenner
+CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. H. Jenner
+ILLUMINATED MSS. J. W. Bradley
+ENAMELS. Mrs. Nelson Dawson
+FURNITURE. Egan Mew
+
+
+=ARTISTS=
+
+ROMNEY. George Paston
+DUeRER. L. Jessie Allen
+REYNOLDS. J. Sime
+WATTS. Miss R. E. D. Sketchley
+HOPPNER. H. P. K. Skipton
+TURNER. Frances Tyrrell-Gill
+HOGARTH. Egan Mew
+BURNE-JONES. Fortunee De Lisle
+LEIGHTON. Alice Corkran
+REMBRANDT. Mrs. E. A. Sharp
+VELASQUEZ. Wilfrid Wilberforce and A. R. Gilbert
+VANDYCK. M. G. Smallwood
+DAVID COX. Arthur Tomson
+HOLBEIN. Beatrice Fortescue
+COROT. Ethel Birnstingl and Mrs. A. Pollard
+MILLET. Netta Peacock
+CLAUDE. E. Dillon
+GREUZE AND BOUCHER. Eliza F. Pollard
+RAPHAEL. A. R. Dryhurst
+
+
+PLYMOUTH
+WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
+PRINTERS
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
+
+
+Contemporary spellings have generally been retained even when
+inconsistent. A small number of obvious typographical errors have been
+corrected and some names regularised; missing punctuation has been
+silently added. Advertising material has been moved to the end.
+
+
+The following additional changes have been made:
+
+ to away with him                        to _do_ away with him
+
+ and in Pope Leo's hands for a           and _would remain_ in Pope Leo's
+ year yet                                for a year yet
+
+ Die zetter'schen Madonna                Die _Zetter'sche_ Madonna
+ vow Solothurn                           _von_ Solothurn
+
+ that I imagine it to have               that I imagine to have
+
+ Mecaenas                                 Maecenas
+
+ at Basel (1515-77)                      at Basel (1515-_17_)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Holbein, by Beatrice Fortescue
+
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