20 
HOLBEIN IN GERMANY. 
f Nature and Art, January 3, 18G7. 
dwells in Unnu. I have watched the egg of the 
great cackler or goose of the god Scb ; I grow, it 
grows ; I live, it lives ; I breathe, it breathes.” | 
This same mystical form is found on a statue of 
Senmut, an officer of the court of Thotlimes III., 
in the Berlin Museum, and is often repeated on 
sarcophagi and other objects, apparently in refer- 
ence to the reanimation of the dead. The mystic 
meaning here hidden, unless it be an allusion to 
the mundane egg of the Orphic writers, is un- 
known. 
[The learned curator of the Soane Museum, 
Mr. Joseph Bonomi, F.R.S.L., F.R.A.S., has kindly 
offered a few remarks of which we gladly avail 
ourselves.] 
The front and profile views of the statue are not 
such as would be conveyed to the mind through the 
eye, but they are what architects call geometrical 
elevations drawn by actual measurement, so that 
the dimensions of any part may be known by appli- 
cation of the compasses to the scale. 
The front elevation is in outline, for the greater 
facility of measurement, and the profile gives the 
precise colour of the stone, which is a conglomerate, 
in which flints and pebbles occur cemented together 
in nature’s workshop by sand and rust of iron. 
Notwithstanding this very adverse material, it 
has been fashioned into the figure of a man, and 
may be considered one of the best specimens of 
Egyptian sculpture in our national collection. In 
the general contour, the figure resembles very much 
the inhabitants of Lower Nubia; as does the colour 
of the material, particularly the head and arms, 
the complexion of the inhabitants of Thebes. For 
this purpose, and for its durability, it is supposed, 
this description of stone was chosen. The features 
are well defined, and the countenance has nothing: 
of the African type, — a circumstance which goes 
far to corroborate the notion which has la/tely been 
entertained of the foreign origin of the family of 
Rameses. The arms are well formed, and the 
fasciculi of the deltoid, arising from the acromium 
scapulae, better defined than in any other Egyptian 
statue in the Museum. The hands are rather 
small. The left leg is advanced in the attitude of 
marching, with which leg, it may be observed, it is 
to this day customary to make the first step. The 
knee of this limb is particularly well formed. The 
ancle is rather thick, and the foot heavy ; the instep 
exceeds a little the height prescribed by the canon 
in use at the period, that is to say, one-nineteenth 
of the whole height of the figure. 
It may be interesting to the reader to know how 
the inscriptions on the statue have been so faithfully 
given in the accompanying plate. The first opera- 
tion was to obtain, by means of wet absorbent paper, 
an impression of each legend or line of hieroglyphs. 
This was afterwards faithfully copied by reduction 
according to scale ; and this drawing, being handed 
over to the photographer, has been unerringly 
copied by the rays of the sun, and transferred to 
the stone. 
HOLBEIN IN GERMANY.* 
By H. Ward. 
PART III. BASL E — continued. 
H ANS HOLBEIN never travelled to Italy ” 
(nooit reiscle 11. Holbein naar Italie), said 
his earliest biographer, the Dutchman Carel van 
Mander,+ and his 'words have been repeated by 
others ; but Dr. Woltmann declares that here again 
they have blundered. Let us appeal, says lie, to 
far more trustworthy witnesses, the works of the 
artist, and these will speak plainly of a visit to 
Lombardy. This counter-assertion may be true ; 
but Dr. Woltmann has hardly proved it. He does 
not point out any change in the artist’s colouring ; 
he only dwells on the increase of the old southern 
influence, in matters of feeling and composition, 
and in the modelling of the figures. He does, 
indeed, instance a few direct imitations ; yet he 
allows that most of these were made from the en- 
gravings of Mantegna. The chief witness on his 
side is a Last Supper, derived from that of 
Leonardo da Yinci ; an cl surely such a work as 
* Holbein und seine Zeit : von Dr. Alfred Woltmann. 
Erster Theil. Mit 31 Holzschnitten und einer Photo-Litho- 
grapliie. Leipzig, 1866. 
f Het Sehilderboeck. Haarlem, 1604. 
Leonardo’s — the talk of the whole artist world — 
might well have travelled to Holbein in the shape 
of copies. The original itself seemed at one time 
destined to cross the Alps. Francis I. saw it 
when he entered Milan in 1515. He coveted the 
treasure, grudged it to the Dominican refectory, 
and ordered the whole upper wall to be packed oft' 
to Paris ; but it was found that it would only come 
away in pieces. Disappointed of the painting, he 
tried to secure the painter ; and Leonardo was at 
last tempted to migrate to the palace of St. Cloud, 
but only to die there in the king’s arms, in 1519. 
Thus the great artist’s career was limited to Italy ; 
and she retained the crowning fruit of it ; but the 
academy, which he had founded at Milan, must 
have had copies to spare for the northern admirers 
of the Last Stopper, besides the one which we know 
to have’ been made for Francis I. The picture was 
completed just before Holbein was born; and he 
may have been familiar with the design from his 
childhood, for there were many channels through 
which it could have reached him. Not to speak of 
merchants and politicians, the Alps were then pretty 
