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.

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 Dürer's works, offered almost any price for this altar-piece by Dürer's great contemporary. But Basel, unlike Nüremberg, 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."

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.

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 Judæorum." 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.

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 protégé 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 façade 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 façade 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.

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 daïs 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'œuvre 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.)

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 Îs. 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 Lützelburger. 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 Nürnberg, 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.

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 (Plate 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!"

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.

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 Laïs 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. Laïs 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—Laïs Corinthiaca, the infamous mistress of the Greek Apelles.