162 
HOLBEIN IN GERMANY. 
[Nature and Art, November 1, 1S66. 
was born in 149/). Now, 1498 is the birth-year 
assigned by Walpole and others; but then they 
rely upon two authorities, both of which are 
doubtful; the one being the first biographer, Van 
Mander, and the other an engraved portrait of 
Holbein by himself, with his monogram, and his 
age, and a date (H. Ae. 45. An. 1543). Van 
Mander may be set aside, as he blundered so com- 
pletely about the place of birth and year of death ; 
and the original of the engraving is lost ; so that 
we cannot judge whether the age and date may not 
have been inserted by a later hand. Until the 
dated portrait itself is forthcoming, the engraving 
may be fairly balanced by a dated altar-screen (set. 
17, an. 1512), which we shall mention presently. 
Holbein’s third biographer, Charles Patin, remarked 
that he seemed to be prodigiously precocious, and 
suggested that at least three years’ more childhood 
should be allowed him. On the other hand, it 
must be noted that his playroom was a studio : the 
forms of Mediteval art were all around him, and 
next door to him were those of the Renaissance. 
His father and uncle were eminent painters of the 
old school, and his mother was most probably the 
sister of the greatest German designer of the new 
school, Hans Burgkmair. At any rate, there was a 
close intimacy between the two families of Holbein 
and Burgkmair. 
At this epoch Ulm and Augsburg were the two 
head-quarters of Swabian art. Its chief founder, 
however, Martin Schongauer, had settled at Colmar, 
where he is supposed to have died in 1499. The 
familiar designation of Martin Schon he may have 
owed to the beauty of his designs and copper en- 
gravings.* He had studied painting under the 
best pupil of the Van Eycks. He by no means 
rivalled them in colouring or in manly character- 
ization ; his figures, too, are meagre, and his 
draperies hard and angular : but there is a wild 
savagery in his fiends, and a winning grace in his 
angels and Madonnas. His followers at Augsburg 
vied with him in idealism, until they were influenced 
by the modern taste and the growing desire for more 
varied human interest. 
“ Augsburg is the Pompeii of the German 
Renaissance.” These words of a brother art-critic 
are quoted and re-quoted by Ur. "VYoltmann with 
great gusto. He leads us into the town-hall, and 
looks out upon the graceful bends of Maximilian 
Street ; and, half-closing his eyes upon the church 
grandeurs of St. Ulrich, he conjures up the burgher 
palaces of the seventeenth century, when their 
frontages were bright with the gay figures of a 
southern mythology, and the town was like a bonny 
picture-book. The period of this new style of 
art was just opening when Holbein was born. 
Augsburg had always been closely connected with 
the South by commerce. In the fifteenth century 
a new impulse was given to its activity ; it traded 
with India through Portugal, and even fitted out 
* See the curious remarks on this mysterious Martin 
Schon, and his claims to be considered the earliest engraver 
on copper, in Lanzi’s History of Painting (Bohn’s Standard 
Library), vol. i., p. 110. 
vessels for itself. But its chief correspondent was 
Venice; and thus wealth brought Italian taste 
with it. There was a showy life in the city, which 
suited the fantastic spirit of Emperor Max ; so that 
he did not resent the French king’s calling him 
“ the burgher of Augsburg.” Indeed, he desired 
to purchase property there ; but the real burghers 
felt some dread of an imperial mate, and persuaded 
him to be only the guest of the Free City. 
Here were cast his splendid arms and his metal 
statues ; and here dwelt Hans Burgkmair, the chief 
designer of his Triumph. He entered heartily into 
the town frolics, its masques and carnivals, and its 
highest festival of all — that of the Freeshooters 
(or volunteers). When he had closed the Diet 
here in 1518, he turned as he rode beyond the 
gates, and said : “ Now, God bless thee, beloved 
Augsburg, and all thy kindly citizens. Many a 
merry cheer have we made in thee. But now we 
shall never see thee more.” On the 12th of the 
following January he died. 
When this poet-emperor was still in his prime, 
the Holbein family was already well known in 
Augsburg. Hans Holbein, the elder, and his 
brother Sigmund, were probably born as well as 
bred to the brush, somewhere about 1450. The 
former was soon commissioned to paint for churches 
and cloisters in other parts of South Germany ; and 
his earliest extant work appears to be an enthroned 
Virgin at Nuremberg, bearing the date (half effaced) 
of 1492. It is most delicately finished, like an old 
Flemish miniature, with a background and frame- 
work of Gothic architecture. Further on we shall 
find that a few works, adorned with arabesques of 
the Renaissance, used to be attributed to him : 
they bear the name of Hans Holbein, but are now 
generally supposed to be by his son. As if the 
confusion were not enough, some modern critics 
have started a third Hans Holbein, of Augsburg, 
and called him the grandfather; but Dr. Woltmann 
has banished him to the land of shadows. His 
arguments are stated in a passage (pp. 58—70), which 
is quite a model of close and shrewd investigation. 
We have no room for more than a bare indication 
of his line of arguments. This shadowy grandfather 
owed his brief existence to- two paintings. The 
first is a Madonna, in which the composition is 
borrowed from Martin Schongauer’ s Madonna in 
tlio Rose-garden ; but the background, instead of 
being a hedge of roses, is a gay mountain landscape. 
It bears this inscription “ Hans Holbein. C[ivis] 
A[ugustanus], 1459.” Now, Ur. Woltmann asserts 
that the letters look very modern ; and he proceeds 
to show that this, if genuine, is the only known 
instance of the name’s being thus spelt by the 
Holbeins, as long 'as they lived in Augsburg. The 
Augsburgers wrote “ win,” “ hailig,” “ Freihait ” 
(instead of ein, heilig, Freiheit), • and so also 
“ Holbain.” The inscription was first brought to 
light by cleaning, and a might have been easily 
cleaned into e ; but so might 9 into 5 ; and there are 
other reasons for believing that the true date was 
something like 1499. The second painting is known 
as the Basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore, being one 
