Nature and Art, December 1, 1866.] 
HOLBEIN IN GERMANY. 
231 
removed, and not yet replaced by the new ; and 
licence had introduced her twin daughters, smart- 
ness and slovenliness. The latter scandalized the 
Town Council now and then, enough to call for 
some special decrees. In 1506 it was strictly 
forbidden that any one should enter the hall of his 
guild without hose, unless indeed his coat was long- 
enough to hide the bareness of his legs. 
The times were ripe for the caricaturist. Basle 
had already contributed its share to the grim satire 
of mediaeval art and literature. On the cloister 
walk of its Dominican cemetery was a Dance of 
Death, which was famous on its own account, and 
suggested many subjects for the more famous work 
by Holbein. It is vulgarly said to have been 
painted in 1439, when the Council of Basle was 
half-dissolved by the plague ; and to have included 
portraits of the Pope and Emperor, and others ; 
but a few fragments in the Basle museum are all 
that remain now ; and before the series was en- 
graved, it had been more than once painted over. 
Later in the 15tli century appeared the Ship of 
Fools, by Sebastian Brandt, a learned poet of 
Basle ; and it was soon translated, and its wood- 
cuts imitated, in France and England. But these 
were works of general satire. There must be some 
piquant touch of personality to complete what we 
call a caricature. Such touches soon grow obscure ; 
and Dr. Woltmann seems to have detected nothing- 
more than faint traces of them, even in those draw- 
ings by Urs Graf, the goldsmith, which he describes 
so appetizingly. He can only say that a few religious 
subjects are openly caricatured, perhaps in ridicule 
of Italian originals. But when that humorous 
draughtsman died (about 1530), he probably left 
all sorts of nettles behind him, which had even 
then lost their stinging qualities. When we see 
his Thisbe stripped naked in her flight from the lion, 
stabbing herself over the corpse of a Pyramus in 
doublet and hose, we ascribe the travestie to the 
artist’s simple ignorance of archseology. When we 
remark that the fountain-god, who presides over 
this sad catastrophe, is a Fool, we call it a stroke of 
general satire. It is nothing more now ; but in its 
own day this design may have burlesqued some 
individual sentimentalism.* The same remark 
applies to his School of Aristotle, where the pupils 
discover the sage on his hands and knees, bridled 
and saddled, and ridden by a queen of Greece, — as 
Gown calls ker,+ — who is.here attired like a pretty 
horsebreaker of Basle. Urs Graf has left a number 
of satirical allegories, where Nemesis is queen of 
all. The figures are dashingly drawn, says Dr. 
Woltmann, and so are the savage landscapes ; but 
their riddles are hard to read. He still more often 
indulged himself in mere whimsies of diablerie ; or 
else in strange wild contrasts of life and death on 
the battle-field, or under the gallows-tree. 
From this draughtsman Holbein had something 
* The same subject by the same hand, but rather dif- 
ferently treated, is reproduced in Rudolph’s Weigel’s 
Holzschnitte herulimter Meister. 
f Oonfessio Amantis, Book viii., section de Nomine 
illorum., &c. 
to learn, but nothing whatever to dread from his 
rivalry. To him Dr. Woltmann ascribes a few 
figures, which have been jumbled together with a 
few of Holbein’s, and engraved by Mechel in his 
CEuvre de Jean Holbein, under the title of Costumes 
Suisses. Judging from this book, one might sup- 
pose that they were intended for nothing more ; for 
their life is almost quenched in the engravings. 
But while those of Urs Graf have become mere 
tailors’ blocks, those of Holbein still remain creatures 
of breath and motion. Holbein had so much vital 
fire in him, that he threw a spark of it into his 
slightest sketches ; and his finished studies of lambs 
and bats, and “ such small deer,” might make one 
fancy, as Dr. Waagen says, * that he had never 
studied anything else. Photographs of these, and 
of other Basle drawings, amounting to eighty or 
ninety, are now on sale in London. W e will specify 
two of them. The first is a design for stained 
glass : a broad shield, left blank for arms, on a 
pedestal, with a church tower and mountain land- 
scape beyond it ; above it a triumphal arch, framing 
the picture ; the supporters are two halberdiers, one 
erect, the other leaning forward on his halberd, — 
not heraldic dolls, but real warders of the shield, 
yet so statuesque as to be in keeping with the- 
general architectural design. It is worth noting 
that these are the originals of two of the ineffective 
plates in Mechel’s Costumes Suisses. The other 
drawing is a battle-piece, that must have made Urs 
Graf tingle with pleasure or envy, perhaps with 
both. Two of the soldiers have drawn a little 
apart ; but in the thick of the fray every one is 
fighting with every muscle of his body. The rest 
of the drawings are portraits, studies for wall- 
paintings, and so on. Some of the saints are figures 
of astonishing grandeur : but we must not dwell 
upon them ; and still less upon the outline group of 
the Family of Sir Thomas More, which Holbein 
brought to Erasmus in 1529 : we must return to 
where we left him, under the old school signboard. 
He did not wait for better luck, we may be 
sure; he sought it, and found it. In the same 
year he painted half-lengths of Jakob Meier, the 
first plebeian burgomaster, and his wife. Of these 
Mechel, in his CEuvre de Holbein, has given engrav- 
ings. A friend to whom we showed them ex- 
claimed, “ That was not the work of a youth of 
eighteen.” The exclamation was a passing one, 
but probably none the less correct ; and we received 
it as unbiassed testimony in favour of Holbein’s 
new biographer. Dr. Waagen says that the whole 
workmanship is nearly as mature as the famous 
Dresden Madonna, at whose feet are kneeling- 
figures of the same Jakob Meier and his family. 
His portrait is dated 1516 : and the piece of gold 
between his heavily-ringed thumb and finger is a 
commemoration of the date, for in this year he had 
obtained the imperial recognition of the gold coinage 
of Basle. He was subsequently twice re-elected ; 
and under him, in 1521, the last political privileges 
of the Bishop and nobles were swept away : yet he 
* Kunstswerke . . in Deutschland, vol. ii. p. 285. 
