GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRA VINO. 343 



lessness, and I for defending him ! Nay, I triumph in him ; 

 nothing has ever more pleased me than this grand negli- 

 gence. Nobody wants to know how many ribs a skeleton 

 has, any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as 

 the one can breathe, and the other broil ; and still less, when 

 the breath and the fire are both out. 



169. But is it only of the bones, think you, that Holbein is 

 careless ? * Nay, incredible though it may seem to you, but, 

 to me, explanatory at once of much of his excellence, he did 

 not know anatomy at all ! I told you in my Preface, already 

 quoted, Holbein studies the face first, the body secondarily ; 

 but I had no idea, myself, how completely he had refused the 

 venomous science of his day. I showed you a dead Christ of 

 his, long ago. Can you match it with your academy draw- 

 ings, think you ? And yet he did not, and would not, know 

 anatomy. He would not ; but Durer would, and did : went 

 hotly into it wrote books upon it, and upon * proportions of 

 the human body/ etc., etc., and all your modern recipes for 

 painting flesh. How did his studies prosper his art ? 



People are always talking of his Knight and Death, and his 

 Melancholia, as if those were his principal works. They are 

 his characteristic ones, arid show what he might have been, 

 without his anatomy ; but they were mere bye-play compared 

 to his Greater Fortune, and Adam and Eve. Look at these. 

 Here is his full energy displayed ; here are both male and 

 female forms drawn with perfect knowledge of their bones 

 and muscles, and modes of action and digestion, and I hope 

 you are pleased. 



But it is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies. He 

 has a taste for optics also ; and knows all about refraction 

 and reflection. What with his knowledge of the skull inside, 

 and the vitreous lens outside, if any man in the world is to 

 draw an eye, here's the man to do it, surely ! With a hand 

 which can give lessons to John Bellini, and a care which would 

 fain do all so that it* can't be done better, and acquaintance with 



* Or inventive ! See Woltmann, p. 267. "The shin-bone, or the 

 tower part of the arm, exhibit only one bone, while the upper arm and 

 thigh are often allowed the luxury of two " t 



