Holbein’s many-sided art—The destruction of all his larger decorative works—The fertility of his invention and his power of dramatic composition—The influence of the Italian Renaissance upon his art, both in his mural and historical paintings and in his designs for jewellery and the decorative arts—His sacred paintings—His genius in portraiture and his perfection as a draughtsman—A comparison between the art of Dürer and Holbein.

HOLBEIN’S art was many-sided, but, through the cruel caprice of Fate, he is known to-day to most people merely as a great portrait-painter, and, in a lesser degree, as a designer of woodcut illustrations of remarkable power and imagination. It is true, of course, that during the latter part of his life, after he had settled more or less permanently in England, his time was almost entirely occupied with portraiture, and that, beyond portraits, little or nothing of his work remains in this country upon which to form a judgment of the versatility of his genius; and it is true also that his stupendous gifts in this field of art were bound to find free expression. That portrait-painting, however, became in the end his chief occupation was due much more to his environment than to his own personal choice. There was little demand in this country for any other form of art, and the painter, as was only natural, supplied what his patrons asked of him. It is not to be supposed that the master who was capable of producing such great works as the “Meyer Madonna,” or the various altar-pieces and glass designs illustrating the “Passion,” would have abandoned painting such compositions had he received any encouragement to continue; but such encouragement came to a more or less abrupt conclusion during the stormy days of the Reformation in Basel, and for the remainder of his life Holbein produced little or nothing in the field of sacred art. The few examples of this nature from his brush which remain place him in the front rank of sixteenth-century painters, and had his birthplace been south instead of north of the Alps, and his life spent amid surroundings more sympathetic to this side of his genius, there can be little doubt that he would have given to the world a series of sacred works as fine as those of any of the great Italians of the Renaissance.

It is with respect to those larger decorative works, however, upon which he was engaged from time to time throughout his life, both in Switzerland and England—works for which in his own day he was so justly celebrated—that Fate has treated him most unkindly. The total disappearance of his great wall-paintings and monumental decorations is not only an immense loss to art, but has rendered it difficult for all but close students of his work to appreciate to the fullest extent the wide range of his artistic powers. Not a single example of his skill as a mural decorator remains. The passage of time, the carelessness of those whose duty it was to preserve them, and the ravages of fire and of the weather, gradually obliterated these paintings, while such of their faded glories as endured until more modern days were finally swept away by the clumsy hand of the restorer or the building schemes of private owners and civic authorities. Just as it seems practically certain that some at least of his sacred pictures were destroyed by the fury of the rioters in the religious disturbances which finally drove Holbein to Henry’s court, so the mural paintings and pictured stories with which he covered the outer and inner walls of a number of houses in Basel and Lucerne have vanished through causes which, though different, have been equally effective in their powers of destruction. Damp, dirt, and neglect brought about the gradual fading away of his great series of wall-paintings in the Council Chamber of the Basel Town Hall; while similar works of his English period, the wonderful “Triumphs” painted for the banquet-hall of the German Steelyard, and the great fresco of Henry VIII with his parents and Jane Seymour in Whitehall, have disappeared, the former on the final breaking up of the German trade monopoly in this country, and the dispersal of the contents of the Steelyard buildings, and the latter in the fire of 1698. Gone, too, is the large canvas of “The Battle of Spurs,” painted for the festivities at Greenwich in 1527, one of the first of Holbein’s important undertakings in England. No trace of this painting now remains, and a similar fate has befallen the great picture of Sir Thomas More and his family, though in this case it is not absolutely certain that Holbein himself ever completed it. Finally, death cut him down as he was engaged upon the most elaborate portrait group he ever undertook, which was not half finished when he fell a victim to the plague. This list of lost or ruined masterpieces is a long one. Unfortunately, the tale is by no means uncommon in the history of art, but Holbein has suffered in this way more severely than most. Of their beauty and their imaginative power it is now only possible to judge from a few fragments of some of the original frescoes, some inferior copies of certain of them, and a number of masterly sketches and preliminary studies from Holbein’s own hand preserved in the Basel Gallery, the British Museum, the Louvre, and elsewhere. These latter, scanty as they are, remain priceless treasures, for only by means of them is it possible to gain some idea, though it is a pale reflection at the best, of the greatness of Holbein’s achievement in the higher branches of art, the loftiness of his ideals in his monumental paintings, and the wide range of his genius.

In all these large decorative works Holbein displayed the greatest fertility of invention, and a power of dramatic composition of a very high order. The extraordinary energy of conception, the sense of life and movement in all his figures, the truth and expressiveness of their gestures, are all alike admirable. This dramatic power is at its finest in his wall-paintings for the Basel Town Hall—the “Rehoboam” and the “Samuel and Saul”; while in dignity and grandeur of composition, and the noble rhythm of its stately movement, the “Triumph of Riches” panel for the Steelyard is unsurpassed. The extraordinary fertility and exuberance of his imagination is to be seen in the architectural details and decorative settings in which these mural paintings and designs were placed. These settings show how quickly and completely he made the new ideas and decorative motives of the Renaissance his own, while the pictures themselves, for which they formed the background and the frame, breathe the lofty spirit of Raphael and Mantegna. Though there is no slavish copying of the art and architecture of Northern Italy, their influence is to be seen so plainly in the work of his younger days that, as pointed out in earlier chapters, at least a short visit to Lombardy on his part seems to have been absolutely certain.

The same qualities and the same influences are to be discerned in his designs for painted windows and the decoration of books; though smaller in scale, they are conceived with an equal grandeur and dramatic intensity. Indeed, in his “Dance of Death” woodcuts and illustrations to the Old Testament his imaginative and dramatic powers reached their highest manifestation. Minute as they are in execution, they produce the same effects of largeness and dignity of composition as his great wall-paintings must have done. In the “Dance of Death” in particular the wideness of Holbein’s range of vision, the greatness of his style in design, and the intense vitality of his art are seen to the best advantage. These little pictures, a few inches square, express within their borders almost the whole range of the emotions, from the tender sympathy of the lovely “Death and the Ploughman,” and the poignant grief of “Death and the Little Child,” down to the terror, horror, and violence which is encountered in others of the series in which Death suits his coming to the character of his victims. Such works as these show the greatness of Holbein as an imaginative artist. Another side of his nature and his art appears in such a design as his “Peasants’ Dance” on the façade of the Haus zum Tanz in Basel, in which the Teutonic element in his character finds full play. The boisterous, even brutal, merriment of these fellow-countrymen of his, as they fling themselves into the pleasures of the dance with the utmost abandon, made an undoubted appeal to him, and in depicting them he expressed the joy of living which animates every movement with the utmost frankness and realism.

In this wide field of mural decoration and historical painting Holbein was the first and the greatest of those painters north of the Alps who came under the influence of the Italian revival of art. In him the Renaissance found very complete expression. This is also to be seen in his innumerable designs for jewellery and the smaller decorative arts, of which, happily, there still remain many examples. Both in book ornamentations and illustrations, in work for the goldsmith and silversmith, the jeweller, and the maker of stained and coloured glass, he showed himself to be in closest sympathy with the new movement. In his earlier works the effect of this influence appears in the exuberant use he made of the models which he had recently studied, some of the glass designs being overloaded with fantastic reminiscences of the details of Lombardic architecture. Later on, when he had completely grasped the full beauty of the Renaissance forms, his taste became purer, and he adapted them to his uses with the happiest results. In his drawings for personal ornaments and jewellery, most of the best of which were done in London, the earlier exuberance is restrained, and the design is of the purest Renaissance taste, in the practice of which he became an absolute master. These working drawings show infinite invention kept within the true limitations of the materials to be used, frequently combined with very skilful adaptation of the human figure to decorative purposes. It would be difficult to find a more beautiful design in the Renaissance style than the one of the so-called Jane Seymour Cup, in which Holbein more than holds his own with the best Italian workers in this field.

His sacred paintings, in so far as can be judged from those which remain, most, if not all, of which were done before he had reached the age of thirty, possess similar qualities to those of his mural and historical works, and had he but received some little encouragement from the English court, he was capable of producing even finer masterpieces than the “Meyer Madonna” during the seventeen or eighteen remaining years of his life. In his “Passion” and kindred pictures the composition is usually admirable, and the subject treated with that strong dramatic sense which has been noted already as one of the chief characteristics of his frescoes, while in depth and earnestness of feeling they fall but little short of the work of the greatest of the Italians. In the Meyer and the Solothurn Madonnas there is an air of divine tranquillity, and a loftiness and purity in the expression of spiritual beauty, which are combined in the happiest and most exquisite way with remarkable truth to nature, and vividness of accurate and sympathetic portraiture in the figures both of the Virgin and the Divine Child, and those, in the one case, of the kneeling donor and his family, and, in the other, of the attendant saints. Added to these qualities, the rich, subdued, and harmonious colour gives a still greater truth and beauty to the whole. In the panel at Darmstadt, indeed, the painter has reached the full perfection of his art, and that he painted nothing more of this nature must always be a source of deep regret to all who admire him.

In portraiture Holbein’s genius reached its highest manifestations. This gift was largely inherited from his father, but was carried to a much greater pitch of excellence by the son. His technical methods, too, were those of his father, and here again were developed by him to a far greater refinement of touch and skill in modelling; and to these methods he remained constant throughout his life. There is a striking contrast between the rapidity and brilliance of the draughtsmanship of the preliminary studies for his portraits and the patient, concentrated, minute, and delicate brush-work of the finished portraits themselves. In all his completed work he spared himself no pains in the painting of the accessories and details, though in none of it, brilliant and absolutely truthful as it is, is there any sense of mere display, any boastful attempt to show the world how clever he was. He painted all such details with a loving care and an evident delight in their beauty, and wrought them with a perfection and fidelity which has rarely if ever been surpassed. This finish is carried in some of his pictures to a point beyond which no Dutchman or Fleming of his own or succeeding generations ever reached. Yet the elaboration of subordinate things is never overdone; his portraits are never overcrowded with details of this nature in a way to draw the spectator’s attention from the main purpose of the work. This manipulative skill delights and attracts, but is forgotten when the portrait itself is examined. Without any apparent effort on the part of the painter, the sitter looks out from the panel just as he did in life, set down without flattery, with no harsh features softened, and with his character, seized with such penetrative and imaginative power by Holbein, fixed for ever with unerring truth and errorless draughtsmanship for succeeding generations to see and to admire. This effect of absolute truth of portraiture and revelation of character, the one due to the wonderful delicacy, subtlety, and expressiveness of his line, and the other to his sympathetic insight, is obtained by what appear to be the simplest and most straightforward methods. There is a dignity and reticence about the portraits which is admirable. Without thought of self, he occupies himself entirely with the truth as he sees it, and with his desire to realise it as completely as possible; no brilliance of technical skill mars the self-restraint with which he approaches his sitter. He puts little of himself into his portraits, and leaves out little that is worth knowing about the subjects of them. No great subtleties of light and shade are attempted, and his colour, beautiful and true as it is, helps but does not overpower his chief purpose—the complete realisation of the man both in body and soul. Holbein was a painter whose keenness of observation was extraordinary; he missed little or nothing, and saw much that lesser painters would have ignored. With his smooth, fusing methods of painting he reached to most marvellously delicate and accurate modelling of form, which in its expressiveness is beyond all words.[757]

As a draughtsman pure and simple he stands among the very highest; in some of the qualities of his line he has never been surpassed or even equalled. In the Windsor and kindred drawings, preliminary studies for his portraits, his genius finds its most perfect expression, and these are, in many ways, the greatest of his works. Slight as most of them are, they contain all the elements of great art. Every fine quality, except colour, that is to be found in his finished portraiture is to be found here also, and more plainly to be seen, and produced without apparent effort or hesitation. The swiftness yet sureness of his touch, the wonderful delicacy yet strength of his supple, forceful line, its subtlety and flexibility, the penetrative insight, the freedom from all traces of mannerism, and the perfect unity of brain, eye, and hand shown in these drawings, combine to produce the most vivid effect of truthful, living portraiture. His complete mastership is revealed in every touch.

In the German school of painting Dürer was the last and the greatest of the mediævalists; Holbein was the first and the greatest of those who came completely under the sway of the new influences in art and life which reached Germany from beyond the Alps. The art of these two great masters is, in consequence, in many ways so divergent that it is difficult to make any comparison between them. Holbein was the first of the painters of northern Europe who was modern in the sense of the term as we understand it to-day. Dürer was steeped in the spirit of the older schools, both of thought and of art, a dreamer of dreams, a weaver of fantasies, and much of his work had a spiritual passion which Holbein’s lacked, while his art was imbued through and through with the feeling of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, one of the characteristic features of Holbein’s work was its serenity and saneness. As already pointed out, he had great imaginative power, which he could use at times with dramatic intensity. Realism in his painting reached a very high and at the same time a very noble development. His delight in nature is evident in all that he did; he observed her minutely, and took the utmost pleasure in reproducing her manifold beauties down to the smallest details, while his work was filled with a frank delight in life and close sympathy with all things, animate and inanimate, in the world around him. Philosophical thought or theological subtleties left him untroubled. That he was on the side of the Reformation is made clear by more than one of his woodcut designs, but his share in the controversy was after all a minor one, and marked by little or none of that passion which swayed the more eager partisans on either side.

True child of the Renaissance as Holbein was, he was yet one of the most original of artists. His strong individuality stamped everything that he touched; for though the influences under which he was trained can be traced throughout his career, they in no way dominated his genius, which found its own true expression. Circumstances combined to give this originality the fullest play. Both in Basel and in London there was no school of painting worthy of the name, and the artists who worked there had little or nothing to teach him. In both these cities it was he who was the master who towered head and shoulders above his fellow-painters. In this way his art developed upon personal and original lines until it attained that greatness of style which is so marked a feature of everything that he touched.

The art and character of these two great masters of the German school is very happily contrasted by the late Lord Leighton in one of his published addresses to the students of the Royal Academy. “Albert Dürer,” he says, “may be regarded as par excellence the typical German artist—far more so than his great contemporary, Holbein. He was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man ever seeking, if I may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and, as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the Renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of Science. His work was in his own image; it was, like nearly all German Art, primarily ethic in its complexion; like all German Art it bore traces of foreign influence—drawn, in his case, first from Flanders and later from Italy. In his work, as in all German Art, the national character asserted itself above every trammel of external influence. Superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity—never broadly serene. In his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring as to his harmonies, not alluring in his execution—withal a giant.... In Holbein we have a complete contrast to the great Franconian of whom I have just spoken; a man not prone to theorise, not steeped in speculation, a dreamer of no dreams; without passion, but full of joyous fancies, he looked out with serene eyes upon the world around him; accepting Nature without preoccupation or afterthought, but with a keen sense of all her subtle beauties, loving her simply and for herself. As a draughtsman he displayed a flow, a fullness of form, and an almost classic restraint which are wanting in the work of Dürer, and are, indeed, not found elsewhere in German Art. As a colourist, he had a keen sense of the values of tone relations, a sense in which Dürer again was lacking; not so Teutonic in every way as the Nuremberg master, he formed a link between the Italian and the German races. A less powerful personality than Dürer, he was a far superior painter. Proud may that country be indeed that counts two names so great in art.”[758]

It is quite true that he was a better painter than Dürer, for his mastery of the technical side of his art was complete, while his artistic temperament found expression in many different branches of the decorative arts and crafts. He was thus much more than a great painter: he was a great artist and a great craftsman as well, for though he did not actually cut the wood blocks he designed, or fashion the actual cups of gold and silver for which he made the working drawings, he had so perfect a knowledge of the practical side of the crafts, and of the artistic capabilities and the limitations of the mediums in which his designs were to be carried out, that he was indeed the “notable workman” which Erasmus called him. In all that he did, the greatness and the individuality of his style, his power of dramatic composition, the versatility of his imagination and his restraint in the use of it, his serene outlook upon life, and the perfect and unerring unison of his eye and hand, combine with his insight into character and technical skill of the rarest quality to make him one of the few great masters of the world.

Ruskin’s judgment of him, when comparing him with Sir Joshua Reynolds, is so true and so just, that, although so well-known, a sentence from it may be quoted here in conclusion. “The work of Holbein,” he says, “is true and thorough, accomplished in the highest, as the most literal sense, with a calm entireness of unaffected resolution which sacrifices nothing, forgets nothing, and fears nothing. Holbein is complete; what he sees, he sees with his whole soul; what he paints, he paints with his whole might.”[759]