Holbein as a practical designer for craftsmen in the different branches of art workmanship—Architectural designs—The “Holbein Gate” at Whitehall—The Porch at Wilton—Drawing of a royal chimney-piece in the British Museum—Ceilings in St. James’s Palace and the Matted Gallery, Whitehall—Sculptured capitals in the More Chapel, Chelsea Church—Glass window in Shelton Church, Norfolk—Number of his designs for jewellers, goldsmiths, and armourers—The Jane Seymour Cup—Other designs for cups in the Basel Museum—Sir Anthony Denny’s clock—Sword and dagger hilts and sheaths—Henry VIII’s love of jewellery—Pendants—Book covers—Monograms—Panels of ornament—Designs for circular medallions or enseignes in the British Museum and at Chatsworth and Basel—The leading English and foreign jewellers in London—Holbein’s probable connection with some of them.

Holbein was a master in all crafts, and Erasmus’ description of him in his letter to Peter Ægidius,[612] not as painter, or sculptor, but simply as a fine workman (insignis artifex), was a true one. His great technical powers in every department of decorative design, his practical knowledge of the various processes employed in the different branches of art workmanship for which he supplied the craftsmen with patterns and working drawings, show him to have been a real master of arts in every sense of the word.

“The artistic quality he possessed in the highest degree,” says Mr. M. Digby Wyatt, “was, I consider, the intensity with which he realised ‘form.’ Able master as he was of delineation, what gives the stamp of enduring truth to his work is the feeling of assurance his delineation conveys to the mind of the spectator, that what he has drawn from life was the vera effigies of what he saw—that what he designed could never be executed with equal propriety in any other way than as his drawing defined it. There is never any uncertainty as to his intention or meaning—what he says was, was—what he says should be, should be. In this precise conception of pure form and power of conveying his own sense of it to others, he stood upon the same platform as the great men to whose universal genius I have already alluded—Albert Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci. The artist who possesses in a high degree any such power as that I have attempted to define, must of necessity have the requisite aptitude for success in either painting, architecture, or sculpture, or all three; since the power in question lies at the root of and is indispensable to the satisfactory practice of either or all. Architects will do well to look earnestly at such reliques as time has spared of the genius of Dürer, Da Vinci, and especially of Hans Holbein, since, so far as I know, they were the best makers of working drawings who ever lived. Of whatever they drew they gave every characteristic, and their slightest sketches never fail to mark essentials and to omit secondaries of form and expression.”[613]

Horace Walpole, speaking of the rise of Renaissance architecture in England—“Grecian art plaistered on Gothic,” he calls it—says that “the beginning of reformation in building seems owing to Holbein. His porch at Wilton, though purer than the works of his successors, is of this bastard sort; but the ornaments and proportions are graceful and well chosen. I have seen drawings of his, too, in the same kind. Where he acquired this taste is difficult to say; probably it was adopted from his acquaintance with his fellow-labourers at court.”[614] Though there is no doubt that Holbein would have been a fine architect had his inclination led him to practise that branch of art—the backgrounds of his designs for painted glass afford ample proof of his aptitude for design in the new architectural manner of the Italian Renaissance—Walpole’s assertion cannot be accepted as the truth. Henry VIII had at least two good Italian architects in his employment—first, Girolamo da Treviso, and afterwards John of Padua, as well as sculptors and modellers of architectural detail such as Benedetto da Rovezzano and Giovanni da Maiano, and it is the influence of such Italians as these that is to be most clearly discerned in the buildings which were erected in England at this period. Holbein produced a few designs of an architectural nature, but no building exists of which it can be said that he was the architect.

The gateway which, according to tradition, he designed, and hence known as “Holbein’s Gate,” was one of Henry VIII’s additions to Whitehall, and connected the tennis court, the cock-pit, and the bowling-green with the palace, besides providing the King with a gallery into the park, from which he could witness the sports which took place there on special occasions. It was built, according to Walcott, of stone mixed with small squares of flint, and tesselated, and was “very neatly set.” J. T. Smith, in his Antiquities of Westminster, describes it as being in the Tudor style of architecture, with battlements and four lofty towers, the whole enriched with bustos on the north and south sides. Pennant, who had himself seen the gate, says: “To Holbein was owing the most beautiful gate at Whitehall, built with bricks of two colours, glazed and disposed in a tesselated fashion. The top, as well as an elegant tower on each side, were embattled. On each front were four busts, in baked clay, which resisted to the last every attack of the weather.” An excellent idea of its appearance is to be obtained from the engraving by G. Vertue (1725) in the “Vetusta Monumenta.”

The gateway was pulled down in 1759 in order to widen Parliament Street. The materials were obtained by the Duke of Cumberland, Ranger of Windsor Park, with the intention of re-erecting the gate at the end of the Long Walk. In the end, however, they were worked up in several buildings the Duke built in the park. Two of the medallions were put in front of the park lodges, but most of them appear to have been stolen when the gateway was pulled down. Three of them eventually came into the possession of a coachbuilder named Wright, who, in 1769, employed John Flaxman, the sculptor, then a boy, to repair them. They were in terra-cotta, coloured and gilt, and the ornaments included the rose and crown and the King’s initials. Wright had them removed to Hatfield Priory, Essex, where they were still to be seen in 1803, in which year J. T. Smith went down there to copy them. They were larger than life, and were said to be representations of Henry VII, Henry VIII when sixteen, and Bishop Fisher. The two which decorated the front of the park lodges were afterwards removed to Hampton Court, where, says Allan Cunningham, “they are made to do duty as two of the Roman emperors described by Hentzner in his Travels.” It seems probable that they were the work of Giovanni da Maiano. In its design there is nothing to suggest that Holbein was the architect of this famous gateway, and it is much more probable that one of the Italians employed by the King was responsible for it; and the legend which connects Holbein with it may have arisen from the fact that he had rooms in Whitehall, possibly in the very gateway to which his name has been so long attached. It contained, says Dallaway, “several apartments, but the most remarkable was the ‘little study, called the New Library,’ in which Holbein was accustomed to employ himself in his art, and the courtiers to sit for their portraits.”[615]

Tradition has also long associated the name of Holbein with the Porch at Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke. This porch or loggia is of no great beauty, but it is free from any admixture of Gothic detail, and is a good example of the early adaptation in England of Renaissance architecture and ornamentation. It originally formed part of the house, but in the nineteenth century, when some alterations to the buildings were made, it was removed to the end of a walk in the gardens. The dissolution of the monastery of St. Edith, on the site of which the house stands, took place in 1539, and the abbey and its rich possessions were granted by the King to Sir William Herbert shortly afterwards. In the erection of his mansion the first Earl no doubt employed one of the architects then attached to Henry’s court, for there is little in the design of this small porch to support the tradition that the man he selected was Holbein, rather than one of the Italians whose business it was to invent and embellish such buildings. It is, indeed, simpler in design and less lavish in ornamental detail than those architectural backgrounds to his windows which Holbein produced when in Basel, based upon recollections of his visit to Italy. The size of the porch may be gauged by the entrance-way, which measures 8 feet in height. Round the three outer doorways runs an interlaced design cut in low relief, which still retains much of its original colour, the ground a rich red and the ornament yellow, from which the original gilding has worn away. In the corners a wreath of fruit and flowers encircles a small wyvern on a blue background. Above the capitals of the fluted pillars, and just below the projecting mouldings that divide the upper and lower portions of the porch, is a broad band filled with a pattern of intersecting circles, painted on a flat surface in light blue and yellow, lined and touched with darker blue and red. Probably the whole surface was originally painted and gilded. In the upper part the double pillars are repeated, but with rich acanthus capitals. On the three faces over the openings are panels with the Pembroke coat of arms, with a circular medallion on each side, containing heads of men and women in relief, those on the front being apparently busts of the Earl and his wife. The vigorous heraldic design supported by the Talbot dogs and wyverns forms a novel finish to the crown. The interior has a ribbed and vaulted ceiling, and brackets and other details in bold relief, including a number of figures on pedestals. It is, of course, possible that Holbein provided drawings for the building of this porch, but there is no real evidence of this, and the style of the design does not suggest his invention. It is much more likely to have been due to one of Henry’s Italians, such as Antonio Toto. “The character of the whole,” says Woltmann, “as is shown especially in the crowning, is far too feeble for us to think of Holbein as its architect; and, besides this, the costume of the half-length figures, introduced in several of the medallions, shows that the work was executed near the close of the sixteenth century.”[616] Wornum also calls attention to the lateness of the costumes, and says of the porch itself that it displays “neither taste nor knowledge of the style.” He adds: “As for the Whitehall Gate, it was a mongrel of Gothic and Renaissance quite unworthy of Holbein, and, I should imagine, an impossible design for him; it was similar in general character to the gate of St. James’s Palace, at the bottom of St. James’s Street.”[617] Waagen says that the medallions contain busts of Edward VI and the Pembroke family.[618]

Among the architectural works by Holbein, which, if they were ever carried out, cannot now be traced, must be placed his very admirable design in the British Museum for a magnificent chimney-piece[619] for one of Henry VIII’s palaces, in all probability Bridewell. It is conceived in the finest Renaissance taste, and is covered with elaborate and beautiful ornamentation. It is in two stages, each flanked by a pair of fluted pillars carrying richly-decorated entablatures. The upper part is divided into six divisions, the three higher ones containing the royal arms and motto, and the king’s initials and badges, the portcullis and fleur-de-lis. The central panel of the lower range represents a battle of horsemen, and the two on either side contain circular medallions with figures of Charity and Justice, charming compositions, in which beauty of form is rendered with all that freedom and life-like accuracy which characterise everything Holbein produced, even his most hasty sketches. The lower part of the fireplace, over the open hearth, on which the logs are shown burning across two fire-dogs, is filled with a semicircular lunette, with a second scene of horsemen engaged in furious combat, in the centre of which is a wreathed medallion with figures of Esther and Ahasuerus. In the spandrels are smaller rounds with the heads of a lady and a helmeted warrior. On the bases of the pillars on either side are blank tablets for inscriptions, surrounded by scroll-work. This splendid fireplace was evidently intended to occupy an important position in one of the King’s buildings, as the frequent occurrence of his initials and the presence of the royal coat of arms and badges indicate. Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman, when speaking of Holbein, says that he has seen “of his owne draught with a penne, a most curious chimney-peece K. Henry had bespoke for his new built pallace at Bridewell,” and there is no doubt that this is the drawing to which he referred. It is in pen and ink, with Indian-ink wash and slight colour, 21¼ in. × 16¾ in., and was formerly in the Arundel,[620] Richardson, and Walpole collections. It is possible that Holbein made similar designs for Nonsuch Palace. In this drawing Mr. Digby Wyatt thought he saw the same designer as the one who produced the beautiful woodwork of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. This important work, he says, “I cannot hesitate to believe must have been executed from his designs.... In its way it is a model of Renaissance wood-carving, revealing in every arabesque, and especially in the ornaments of the lunettes, the peculiarities of classical form as they were first, if I may use the expression, translated from the Italian into German by Albert Dürer, Altdorfer, Peter Vischer, and others, including Holbein.”[621] The ceiling of the chapel of St. James’s Palace has also been attributed to Holbein, though without any evidence but that of style. This ceiling, says Wornum, “is a curious work, a panelled Renaissance design, and tastefully coloured. It was repaired in 1836 by Sir R. Smirke; the general ground is blue; the panellings are defined by ribs of wood gilt; there are also ornaments in foliage, painted green; and there are many coats of arms emblazoned in their proper colours. A small running open ornament, cast in lead, enriches the under sides of the ribs. The date 1540 occurs in several places, and various short inscriptions are scattered about, as—Henricus Rex 8—H and A, for Henry and Anne of Cleves, with a lover’s knot between them.”[622] His work in connection with the internal decoration of Whitehall, including the great fresco in the Privy Chamber and the ceiling in the Matted Gallery, mentioned by Pepys, has been already described.[623]

One more work of an architectural nature, attributed to Holbein by Mr. F. M. Nichols in his paper, to which reference has been already made, read before the Society of Antiquaries in March 1898, must be noted. In the design of the two capitals[624] supporting the arch which divides the chancel of old Chelsea Church from the More Chapel he “recognised at once the characteristic invention of Holbein.” Each capital is “founded upon the suggestion of a classical capital of the composite order. But the antique model is treated with a freedom which would scarcely have commended itself to the taste of an Italian artist.” They are capitals of half columns, there being only a single arch between the chapel and the chancel, and each capital, like the pillars, has five sides, as the columns, if completed, would be octagonal. In the eastern capital the volutes terminate in a projecting human head, and in each hollow of the abacus above is inserted the winged head of a cherub. The acanthus-leaf design which covers the lower part has various objects introduced among the foliage, such as a shield with More’s arms and his crest of a Moor’s head, a sword crossed with a sceptre, a mace, and two ornamented tablets, one of which bears the date 1528 in Arabic numerals. The western capital is of a somewhat similar design. Human heads take the place of those of the cherubs, and the five sides below display various religious emblems and ornaments, such as crossed candlesticks, a bundle of tapers, a pail of holy water with sprinkling-brush, a clasped prayer-book or missal, and a blank shield. These objects clearly have reference to the religious ceremonies in which More was accustomed to take part in the chapel, while the ornaments on the other capital may have reference to his secular employments. The Holbeinesque character of the designs, combined with the locality of Chelsea, the association with Sir Thomas, and the date 1528, during the earlier part of which year Holbein was still in England, are sufficient, in Mr. Nichols’ opinion, to prove that Holbein was the designer. Mr. Beaver, in his Memorials of Chelsea, in discussing the authorship of these capitals, rejects their attribution to Holbein on the ground that they have an Italian character, and may be more probably ascribed to one of the Italian artists then employed in this country; and most architects who have made a close study of this period are in agreement with him. “But,” says Mr. Nichols, “there are abundant examples in Holbein’s work of his fondness for architectural details of a Renaissance type.... An Italian architect would scarcely have dealt so freely with the just proportions of the classic capital upon which his design was founded. And I am inclined to think that there was only one artist in England at that time who combined the fertility of invention and the graceful mastery of detail shown in these capitals with the boldness and freedom with which the classic model is treated.”[625] Mr. Reginald Blomfield is of opinion that these carvings are of French origin. He says: “The names of French artists or workmen scarcely ever occur in the State Papers, and there are few instances of Renaissance work in England which can be attributed to them. The capitals to the arch between the More chantry and the chancel of old Chelsea Church are an unusual instance. They closely resemble French work of the early sixteenth century such as is found along the banks of the Seine between Paris and Rouen. The monument in the Oxenbrigge Chapel in Brede Church, Sussex, dated 1537, is another rare example. It is of Caen stone, admirably carved, and was probably made in France and shipped to the port of Rye, some nine miles distant from Brede.”[626]

In the same paper Mr. Nichols also draws attention to a two-light stained-glass window in the south chapel of the village church of Shelton in Norfolk, which contains figures of Sir John Shelton and his wife, Ann, daughter of Sir William Boleyn and aunt to Henry VIII’s second queen, a lady well known about the court, who at one time had charge of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. The work, in Mr. Nichols’ opinion, is evidently of foreign origin, being totally different from the English glass of the same period within a few feet of it, and the faces and figures being executed more in the manner of a picture than of stained glass. The foreign origin of the work is shown, among other indications, by the peculiar treatment of the heraldry, which has a decidedly German character. Both figures are represented kneeling, Sir John in a crimson robe lined with fur, and his dame in a contemporary dress of crimson, with the English angular head-dress. The heads appear to have been carefully drawn from good portrait-studies supplied to the glazier. Calculating from the known age and date of Sir John Shelton’s death and his appearance in the window, Mr. Nichols holds that these portrait-studies must have been made about 1527, and he is of opinion that Holbein’s was the hand which supplied some foreign glazier with the designs for them. Neither of the heads, however, is to be found among the Windsor series.

It is when we turn to Holbein’s work for jewellers and silversmiths that the extraordinary fertility and happiness of his invention and the beauty of his design are seen to the greatest advantage. Some hundreds of his working drawings in this branch of art still exist, the greater number of which are in the British Museum and at Basel, those in the latter collection being for the most part contained in a sketch-book of his later English period; indeed, most of the drawings which have survived were produced in England, though he must have carried out a considerable body of work of the same nature while in Basel. When he came to London he was already a master of decorative design as applied to most of the handicrafts, and his influence soon made itself felt among a number of the craftsmen employed by Henry and his court. His wonderful skill in the production of fine Renaissance ornamentation of the purest taste, combined with a happy use of the human figure, set a fashion in jewellery and personal ornament, and inspired those who carried out his designs to a greater beauty and delicacy of workmanship. The impetus he gave was in the direction of fresh models of beautiful form in place of the mannerisms of Gothic art into which the decorative crafts had sunk in this country at the period of his first arrival in England. Even at so early an age he already possessed, in addition to his skill in painting and drawing and book illustration, a thorough knowledge of the rules of composition and design according to the best Italian traditions, and was well versed in the use of the forms and proportions of classical architecture and ornament, in addition to possessing practical skill in the true application of design to the various art crafts and industries.

Holbein’s most elaborate design for goldsmiths’ work which has survived is the one known as the Jane Seymour Cup, which was evidently made to the order of the King at about the time of his marriage with that lady in 1536. Two drawings for this exist in pen and ink, the more highly-finished one, which is washed with colour and gold, being in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,[627] and the other in the British Museum,[628] the latter (Pl. 41), which is 17¾ in. × 9½ in., showing slight modifications. The cup is a covered one, of a very beautiful shape, the lines of which are not disguised or confused by the lavish ornamentation with which it is covered. The body is set with four circular medallions containing busts of “antique heads” in high relief, the one facing the spectator being a woman with bared breast. Above them is a deep band of exceptionally beautiful interlacing ornament of floriated design; and below a smaller band with the initials of Henry and his Queen, entwined with true-lovers’ knots, alternating with square-cut precious stones set as flowers, and similar bands of precious stones at the base, and round the rim of the cover. The stem is decorated with hanging pearls and dolphins, cupids’ heads, and wreaths, and a narrow band containing the motto of the Queen, “Bound to Obey and Serve,” which is repeated on the cover. The latter is of very light and graceful design, with two grotesque figures terminating in fish-tails blowing foliated trumpets, and above them two cupids supporting a shield surmounted by the royal crown. When carried out in gold the general effect must have been one of extraordinary richness and beauty. That it was so completed is proved by the fact that the cup itself was still in the royal collection at the accession of Charles I in 1625. In an inventory of that date it is thus described: “Item a faire standing Cupp of Goulde, garnished about the cover with eleaven Dyamonds, and two poynted Dyamonds about the Cupp, seaventeene Table Dyamonds and one Pearle Pendent uppon the Cupp, with theis words BOVND TO OBEY AND SERVE, and H and I knitt together; in the Topp of the Cover the Queenes Armes, an Queene Janes Armes houlden by twoe Boyes under a Crowne Imperiall, weighing Threescore and five ounces and a halfe.” No further traces of this masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art exist. In spite of its beauty, it was most probably melted down, like much of the royal plate, to meet the demands of an impoverished exchequer. It is, indeed, a matter of the keenest regret that, in spite of the hundreds of designs with which Holbein furnished the London goldsmiths or the Basel armourers, not a single example of work so carried out remains, and his achievements in this branch of art can only be judged from his working drawings.

His designs for cups with covers, goblets, tankards, and other table vessels, which from the richness of their ornament were evidently intended for ceremonious occasions, are numerous. Some of them are only known through Hollar’s etchings, while the drawings for the remainder are for the most part in the Basel Gallery. The most interesting of them is the standing cup and cover in the Basel sketch-book, which Holbein designed for his friend Hans von Antwerp (Pl. 42),[629] which may have been intended by the latter as an addition to the collection of plate in the guild-hall of the Steelyard merchants. The left-hand half has been drawn with the pen, from which the other half has been transferred by damping and pressure. The broad, flat body has a deep band of ornament containing nude figures blowing trumpets amid foliage, and a somewhat similar band round the base, and on the crest of the cover is the nude figure of Truth holding a book and a lighted torch. By the side is an alternative design for this figure. Round the rim of the cover is inscribed HANS VON ANT[WERPEN]. Another cup and cover, or table ornament, with a wide stand, of which only the left side is shown, though much more hasty in execution, is a more highly elaborated piece of decoration, in which small nude standing figures are combined with leafage and festoons.[630] On the side of the sheet are a number of alternative sketches for various details. There is no need to describe at length the other designs for covered cups in the Basel Gallery, one of which is surmounted by the nude figure of a woman with right arm extended and the left hand resting on a shield;[631] while a second design has a figure of Justice, and on the base a medallion with the bust of a lady in sixteenth-century costume.[632] Several studies for tankards are to be found among Hollar’s etchings. These etchings indicate the existence at one time of a third sketch-book or set of designs, which, at the time when Hollar worked from it, was in the possession of the Earl of Arundel, but has since disappeared.

One of the most important of Holbein’s designs in the British Museum is the large drawing in pen and ink and Indian-ink wash, of an astronomical clock, which was formerly in the Mariette and Horace Walpole collections (Pl. 43).[633] This clock, the design for which must have been one of Holbein’s last undertakings, was presented to Henry VIII by Sir Anthony Denny on New Year’s Day, 1544, shortly after the painter’s death. It consists of an hour-glass enclosed within a case, the doors of which stand open in the drawing, with a terminal figure of a satyr in the centre, which recalls the very similar figure in the full-length woodcut portrait of Erasmus. The hour-glass rests on a pedestal with legs, supported at the corners with other terminal figures of satyrs, and having a circular space in the centre left blank in the drawing. On the decorated crown of the case stand two nude boys—for which there is an alternative design in the British Museum on one of the leaves of the Sloane sketch-book[634]—each pointing to a sundial of metal curved outwards in an arc, for which their fingers serve as gnomon. On their heads rests a mechanical clock with a sun-face in the centre of the dial with fiery locks, one of which forms the pointer, the whole surmounted by a crown. On the left side of the sheet is a compass, probably intended to fit inside the clock-case. The drawing is inscribed, in Sir Anthony Denny’s own handwriting: “Strena facta pro anthony deny camerario regio quod in initio novi anni 1544 regi dedit.” He was then King’s Chamberlain, and was knighted in the September of the year in which he made his royal master this handsome gift. Other notes occur on the drawing, here and there illegible, made evidently for the guidance of the craftsman who carried out Holbein’s design, which is simpler, though no less characteristic in style, than his drawing for Queen Jane Seymour’s gold cup.

His designs for sword and dagger hilts, sheaths, and various ornaments for sword-belts and weapons are numerous, and again display his extraordinary fertility of invention and his power of combining the human figure with conventional floral and grotesque Renaissance ornament into a decorative whole of the utmost elegance and beauty. One of the finest, and most elaborate, is the large pen-and-wash drawing, 17⅞ in. × 4⅝ in., in the British Museum, which was purchased in 1874 from the Earl of Wicklow’s collection (Pl. 44).[635] The handle has spiral bands set with stones, and numerous pearls are also set in the sheath, the hilt, and the guard. These gems are held or supported by a number of nude figures of women, old men, satyrs, and children amid foliage, each one full of individual character, and drawn as only Holbein could draw them. It was evidently intended for execution in chiselled gold or silver, and produces an effect of great splendour. Only the right half of the sheath is drawn, as the design was to be repeated on the other side. There is an alternative design for parts of the hilt in the Basel Gallery.[636] In the latter collection there is also a study for the sheath of a short sword or cutlass in which a somewhat similar arrangement has been carried out.[637] It is an offset taken by Holbein from a pen-and-ink drawing. Another of the Basel designs is for a powder-flask, possibly to be executed in bone or ivory, in which naked cupids are intermingled with the foliage.[638]

There is a splendid design for a dagger sheath in the Bernburg Ducal Library, which is divided into four compartments, the three upper ones containing figures in settings of Renaissance architecture.[639] In the uppermost is a group representing the Judgment of Paris. The youth, in sixteenth-century costume, reclines with his back against a pillar with Mercury bending over him and offering him the apple, the three goddesses standing in front of him, and Cupid aiming at him with a bow and arrow. The next division shows the deaths of Pyramus, a cleverly foreshortened figure beneath a fountain, and Thisbe, who is stabbing herself by his body. Below is Venus within a scalloped niche, with the long ass’s ears of a jester, and a blindfolded cupid at her feet. The lowest compartment contains scroll-work, the whole terminating in a cherub’s head within volutes, with the initial H. at the bottom. There is a slighter preliminary pen study for this sheath in the Basel Gallery, which shows a number of differences (Pl. 45 (3)).[640] Another dagger sheath at Basel is of particular interest because it is dated 1529,[641] and so must have been drawn in Basel after Holbein’s return from his first visit to England (Pl. 45 (1)). The design consists entirely of conventional foliage, seen against a black background, as though to be executed in chiselled open-work over some black material such as velvet, or to be filled in with niello. There are other sheaths in which the subject stands out against a plain black background, one, in Berlin, with a Dance of Death,[642] of which there is a repetition at Basel (Pl. 46 (1)),[643] which appears to be an impression taken from the Berlin drawing, strengthened and finished with Indian-ink, by some other hand than Holbein’s; and another in the British Museum, with a Triumph of Bellona,[644] of which only the sheath is by him. The hilt is obviously the work of some other designer, in all probability, according to the British Museum catalogue, Peter Flötner of Nuremberg. It was formerly in the Beckford Collection, and consists of two pieces of paper joined together, the hilt on one and the sheath on the other. Another sheath in the Basel Gallery is decorated with a Roman Triumph (Pl. 46 (2)),[645] slightly drawn, in the manner of Mantegna, recalling the frieze in the 1517 portrait of Benedikt von Hertenstein; and a second of a like quality, representing Joshua’s Passage of the Jordan (Pl. 46 (3)).[646] Other designs for the knobs and cross-pieces of dagger hilts will be found in the British Museum (Pl. 47).