A much more important work of the same year, 1516, also in the Basel Gallery (No. 312),^[125] is the double portrait of the Burgomaster of Basel, Jakob Meyer or Meier “zum Hasen,” so called from the sign of a hare which hung upon his house, and his second wife, Dorothea Kannengiesser (Pl. 15). This new patron of Holbein’s proved to be an excellent friend, giving him more than one commission, and obtaining important public work for him. Meyer was a man of influence in Basel, and was the first citizen not of knightly birth to be elected as burgomaster. His election took place in 1516, and it was no doubt in honour of this event that he ordered the portraits. He was again elected to the post in 1518 and 1520—no one was allowed to fill it for two years in succession; but in 1521 he fell into disgrace, through secretly accepting a higher pension from the French king than the laws of the city allowed. For this he was dismissed from office, and made to refund the money, with the exception of the fifteen crowns which was the permitted sum. Objecting to this treatment, he was clapped into prison, and was only released on his family paying a fine. During his burgomastership many important changes took place in the municipal government of Basel, and the Church and the nobility were gradually deprived of all their privileges. In his younger days he had served as a soldier in Italy with some distinction, and after his deprivation of office he went there again, in 1524, as captain of a Basel troop in the pay of France. On his return home he attempted without success to obtain the annulment of the decree against him of exclusion from all public offices; and during the religious disturbances of 1529 he was at the head of the Catholic party, then in armed opposition to the Reformers. The reasons which induced Meyer to choose Holbein as the painter of the portraits of himself and his young, comely, and newly-married wife, when there were older painters of repute in the town, are not known; but his first wife, Magdalena Baer, had been a sister of the Hans Baer for whom the Zürich table had been painted, and it may have been owing to this connection that the young artist obtained his first introduction to the burgomaster.

In the portraits, which were painted and framed as a diptych, Meyer and his wife are shown at half-length and three-quarters face, turned towards one another. Meyer is wearing a black dress, open at the front to show his white, gold-embroidered shirt, and a scarlet cap on his bushy, curly brown hair, which covers his ears. He is clean-shaven, and holds in his left hand a coin, which is introduced to indicate his calling as a money-changer, and also, it is supposed, to commemorate the charter granted to the Baselers in January 1516 for the mintage of gold coins. On the same hand he wears several heavy gold rings. His eyes are dark brown, and his complexion of a ruddy hue, and his face shows shrewdness and strength of character, while the eyes are intelligent and determined. His wife wears a red dress, fronted and edged with a broad band of black velvet across the breast, embroidered with circles of gold ornamentation. The dress is cut low, to show a white under-bodice worked in elaborate designs, with hanging tassels and a band of gold embroidery of a heart-shaped pattern. Her hair and ears are covered with a large white cap of thin linen decorated with bands of gold of a checked design, of the hooded shape common in Switzerland at that period, with a long white fall which is brought over the right shoulder and reaches the waist. Round her neck hang two thin chains, one of gold and one of pearls, the ends of which are hidden beneath the bodice. Her hands are not shown. Though not strikingly handsome, she has youth and good looks in her favour. The two portraits are placed against one continuous architectural background, seen in rather strong perspective. In the centre an elaborate gilt frieze of Renaissance ornamentation is supported by short pillars of red marble, and on either side larger columns, also decorated with gilded carving, form the supports of two arches. Through these the blue sky is seen, against which the wife’s head stands out in strong colour contrast. Owing to the perspective arrangement, the opening is smaller in the portrait of Meyer, but part of his red cap is placed against the blue sky with equally striking effect. The signature, “H.H.,” and the date, “1516,” are placed on a small shield in the entablature over Meyer’s head.^[126]

In these two portraits—the earliest in point of date which can be ascribed to him with absolute certainty—Holbein, though not yet twenty years old, shows himself to be already a master of portraiture. The qualities they possess are the same, though not yet perfectly developed, as those which are to be discovered in such complete perfection in the work of his maturity. They show that he had already the power of seizing character, and was accurate and unhesitating in draughtsmanship. All the details, more particularly the elaborate ornaments of the woman’s dress, are drawn with a truth and delicacy that already falls but little short of the brilliance of his technique in such a masterpiece of portraiture as the Georg Gisze in Berlin, or the Jane Seymour in Vienna. The colour, though rich and strongly contrasted, is harmonious and delicate in the general effect it produces. The whole work, indeed, gives the impression that it is from the hand of an artist who is already sure of his methods. There is nothing faltering about it, and few indications that the painter was still only on the threshold of his career. All that was to come in the future was a deeper insight into nature, a greater perfection of methods which in the main were to remain unaltered throughout his life, and a more brilliant understanding and application of the lessons of the Italian Renaissance to the more decorative portions of his pictures.^[127]

The rapidity with which his art was maturing is shown more strikingly, perhaps, in the two studies for the portraits, now in the Basel Gallery (Pl. 16),^[128] than even in the pictures themselves. These heads, of the same dimensions as the finished works, are about half the size of life. They are drawn in silver-point, with fine and delicate lines, and equally delicate modelling of the flesh, which has been afterwards touched here and there with red chalk. They display the utmost care and precision, though the line is less subtle and searching than it is in the drawings of his greater English period. They are, nevertheless, extraordinary work for so young a man, and of great beauty. They show a method of procedure in the taking of portraits which remained Holbein’s almost invariable practice throughout his life. He always made these preparatory drawings—the later ones, of course, with much greater freedom—in which the form, character, and expression of his sitter were fixed once and for all. Colour was occasionally indicated, but as a rule all that he did was to jot down on the margin of the paper a few notes for future guidance. Thus on the drawing of Meyer, he has written notes as to the colour of the hair, eyebrows, and cap.^[129] It was his habit, apparently, to rely upon his memory and these curt notes when he came to paint the actual portrait. This method enabled him to dispense with many sittings; after a few hours spent in close observation of his subject, he had obtained all the information he wanted. For the rest, he depended on what must have been a remarkable memory both for colour and form.

During 1517 Holbein left Basel, and was absent for a considerable time. There is one work by him, however, of this year which in all probability was painted before his departure, as it belonged to Bonifacius Amerbach. This is the “Adam and Eve”^[130] of the Basel Gallery (No. 313) (Pl. 17), which is painted in oils on paper. It is entered in the Amerbach catalogue as: “Ein Adam vnd Eva mit dem äpfel H. Holb. vf holz mit olfarb.” It is a study from life of the head and shoulders of the same models used for the heads of St. John and the Virgin already described, while the “Adam” also served as model for the head of Christ in “The Scourging” of the early Passion series on canvas. Eve, with a long curl of fair hair falling over her right shoulder and breast, holds the apple in her left hand, her face being of a rather dull and heavy type. Adam, with dark curly hair, and a long moustache which drops below his chin, and head slightly bent, has his right arm flung across Eve’s shoulders. The general tone is brownish, but considerable effect is produced by the contrast between the dark complexion of Adam and the blonder tones of Eve’s flesh.

It is boldly and thinly executed, and the lines of the drawing are still plainly to be distinguished through the paint. The fingers of Eve’s hand, with high lights on the nails, are excellently modelled, already giving indications of what afterwards became one of the chief features of his portraiture, the beauty and character of the hands. Both heads stand out against a background which is now black. It is signed and dated, “1517, H.H.” Dr. Ganz points out the strong influence of both Baldung and Dürer this small study betrays.^[131] It also bears a curious resemblance to the heads in the well-known picture of “Adam and Eve” by Mabuse at Hampton Court^[132] (No. 385 (580)), though the position of the two figures is reversed. It is seen more particularly in Adam’s mass of dark hair covered with small curls, Eve’s long ringlets, the expression of pain on the faces, and the position of Adam’s arm across Eve’s shoulders. There is another very similar, but smaller, “Adam and Eve” by Mabuse in the Berlin Gallery (No. 661), displaying a composite art, half Flemish and half Italian, which is signed and dated 1516.