HOUtKIN 



735 



hia maternal uncle. The lii-t paintings that can 

 \\itli i-fi i.-uiii \ be attributed to Holbein's hand 

 are two panels of an altarpiece in the above 

 named collection. VarioiiH Madonna pii-tun--, 

 \\ln.-li bear n.-n-i- of ili.' influence of the school 

 ni" Mending, and a votive work in memory of 

 Burgomaster I'lridi Schwartz, won; painted in the 

 Immediately following years; but the finest of the 

 artist's productions executed in Augsburg was the 

 altarpiece for the monastery of St Catharine ( 1515- 

 16), now in the i'inakothek, Munich, Renaissance 

 architectural ornamentation of great beauty being 

 skilfully introduced. 



About 1516 I loll. i -in was at work in Basel, but 

 he does not appear to have settled there till 1520, 

 when he received the freedom of the city, and 

 became a member of the guild Zum Himmel, 

 which his elder brother Ambrosius, also a painter, 

 had joined three years previously. During the 

 interval he was painting in Zurich, and in Lucerne 

 where he decorated the interior and exterior of 

 the residence of the mayor, Jacob von Hertenstein, 

 with paintings now only known through draw- 

 ings which were executed before the building 

 was destroyed in 1824. It is possible that he also 

 during this period made a brief visit to Milan ; 

 And the influence of the masters of northern 

 Italy, especially of Mantegna and Leonardo da 

 Vinci, can be traced in his subsequent productions. 

 Among the more important works executed at 

 Basel are the powerful portraits of the Burgo- 

 master Jacob Meier and his wife ; while the 

 religious subjects of the period include eight scenes 

 of the Passion, painted upon a panel, ranked very 

 highly by Woltmann, though Rumohr and Wornum 

 are unable to regard them as Holbein's work, and 

 the doors of the organ of Basel Cathedral, painted, 

 upon canvas, with stately figures of saints and 

 bishops. All these works are now in the Basel 

 Museum. To 1522 is due one of the most import- 

 ant of the master's religious pictures, the Madonna 

 and Child with St Ursus and St Martin of Tours 

 (or perhaps St Nicholas), painted for the church of 

 Reuchen, near Solothurn ; and to about the same 

 date is assigned the great work commissioned by 

 that Jacob Meier whom Holbein had already painted, 

 and representing the merchant with his wife and 

 family kneeling before the Virgin and Child. The 

 picture exists in two slightly-varying versions at 

 Darmstadt and at Dresden, of which the former is 

 the finer, and is now generally admitted to be the 

 original. His mural decorations of ' The Peasants' 

 Dance' and various classical subjects on the 

 facades of a house in the Eisengasse, and those 

 in the town-hall, are now known only through 

 sketches and a few surviving^ fragments. He also 

 executed noble portraits of Bonifacius Amerbach, 

 professor at Basel, in the museum there ; of Fro- 

 benius, the printer ; and two distinct portraits of 

 Krusmus and one of Melanchthon. Another 

 interesting memorial of the intercourse between 

 Erasmus and Holbein is a copy of the ' Praise of 

 Folly,' published by Frobenius in 1514, in which 

 the margins are enriched by a series of vigorous 

 and humorous pen -sketches by Holbein. It is now 

 in the Basel Museum. 



During his residence at Basel Holbein was largely 

 employed upon designs for the wood-engravers, 

 probably indeed it was mainly with a view to such 

 work that he settled there. In addition to almut 

 twenty alphabets of richly ornamental letters, he 

 designed over 300 woodcuts, including printers' 

 devices, title-lx>rders, and such general illustrations 

 as those to Adam Petri's editions of Luther's New 

 Testament (1522 and 1523), to Thomas Wolffs 

 issue of the same work (1523), and to Petri's 

 edition of Luther's Old Testament (1523); as also 

 the large single woodcuts of 'Christ bearing the 



Cross' and 'The Resurrection,' and the two scarce 

 HubjectH of 'The Sale, of Indulgence*' and 'The 

 True Light,' which, like some other of hi* works, 

 show the artist's warm sympathy with the Reforma- 

 tion. His most important woodcuts, however the 

 noble .series of ' The Dance of |)eath and tin; ' Old 

 Testament Cuts ' though probably executed at thw 

 time, were not issued till a later period, the first 

 editions of l>oth lieing published at Lyons in )'>.'{x. 

 It was formerly U-lieved that Holbein was engraver 

 as well as designer of the woodcuts associated with 

 his name, but it is now generally conceded that he 

 only designed and drew them. 



In the end of 1526 or the beginning of 1527 Hol- 

 bein visited England, when he was introduced by 

 Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, then in high favour 

 with Henry VIII. He now began his great Heries 

 of portraits of the most eminent Englishmen >t his 

 time, the studies for many of which exist in the 

 cabinet of eighty-seven masterly drawings by his 

 hand in the royal collection at Windsor. In various 

 ways these drawings throw valuable light upon 

 his methods of work ; the fact, for instance, that 

 many of them bear written notes of the coloui- of 

 their details proves that he was accustomed 

 to execute his finished oil portraits from such 

 charcoal and chalk sketches as these, and not 

 directly from the life. Excellent autotype repro- 

 ductions of these drawings have been issued by 

 the South Kensington Department. Among the 

 most notable of his oil portraits executed in Eng- 

 land are ' Archbishop Warham,' of which versions 

 exist at Lambeth Palace, in the Louvre, and in 

 the possession of Viscount Dillon ; ' Sir Henry Guild- 

 ford,' in the royal collection at Windsor ; ' Nicholas 

 Kratzer,' the king's astronomer, in the Louvre ; and 

 'The Family of Sir Thomas More,' now lost, but 

 known through various copies and through the 

 original sketch, now in the Basel Museum. 



On his return to Basel (1529) Holbein painted 

 the group of his wife and two children now in the 

 museum there ; and in the following year again 

 took up his work in the council-hall, executing 

 powerful mural subjects of ' Rehoboam,' ' Samuel 

 and Saul,' and ' Hezekiah,' works now destroyed. 

 Probably in the beginning of 1532 he again visited 

 London, whence a pressing invitation from the 

 Basel council was ineffectual to withdraw him. 

 At first he was much employed in London by the 

 German merchants of the Hanseatic League, many 

 of whose portraits he executed. Sketches still 

 remain for the decorations which he designed for 

 these traders of the steelyard on the occasion of the 

 marriage of the king to Anne Bolevn ; which, with 

 'The Triumphs of Riches and of Poverty,' were 

 almost the only symbolical subjects executed at 

 this period, to which are also due the great portrait 

 group at Longford Castle known as ' The Am- 

 bassadors,' probably representing Sir Thomas 

 Wyatt and John Leyland, the portraits of Thomas 

 Cromwell, and the exquisite circular miniatures 

 of Henry and Charles Brandon, sons of the Duke 

 of Suffolk, in the royal collection at Windsor. 

 He also executed many masterly designs for 

 metal-work, and such drawings for the wood 

 engravers as the title-pages of Coverdale's trans- 

 lation of the Bible (1535) and of Hall's Chronicles 

 (1548). From a letter from the poet Bourdon 

 to Solimar, dated 1536, we learn that Holbein 

 at that time held the appointment of royal 

 painter to Henry VIII. ; and in this capacity he 

 executed at Whitehall Palace a mural painting of 

 the monarch and Queen Jane Seymour, with 

 Henry VII. and Elizal>eth of York, destroyed in 

 the fire of 1698, of which a copy by Van Leemput 

 exists at Hampton Court, while a portion of the 

 original cartoon is at Hardwick Hall. This latter 

 work and the large-sized miniature in the possession 



