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Illustration: _Hans Holbein the Younger_
_Coloured Chalks. Basel Museum_
LITTLE BOOKS ON ART
GENERAL EDITOR: CYRIL DAVENPORT
HOLBEIN
BY
BEATRICE FORTESCUE
WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First published in 1904_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
HOLBEIN'S PERIOD, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY WORK
Historical epoch and antecedents--Special conditions and character
of early Christian art--Ideals and influence of the monk--Holbein's
relation to mediaeval schools--His father, uncle, and Augsburg
home--Probable dates for his birth and his father's death--Troubles
and dispersion of the Augsburg household--From Augsburg to Basel--His
brother Ambrose--Erasmus and the _Praise of Folly_; some erroneous
impressions of both--Erasmus and Holbein no Protestants at
heart--Holbein and the Bible--Illustrated Vernacular Bibles in
circulation before Luther and Holbein were born--Holbein's earliest
Basel oil-paintings--Direct and indirect education--Historical,
geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--Beginning of
his connection with the Burgomaster of Basel--Jacob Meyer zum
Hasen--Holbein's woodcuts--His studies from nature--Sudden visit
to Lucerne--Italian influence on his art--Work for the Burgomaster
of Lucerne 1
CHAPTER II
HOLBEIN BASILIENSIS (1519-1526)
_Holbein Basiliensis_--Enters the Painters' Guild--Bonifacius
Amerbach and his portrait--The Last Supper and its Judas--The so-called
"Fountain of Life" at Lisbon--Genius for design and symbolism in
architecture--Versatility, humour, fighting scenes--Holbein becomes a
citizen and marries--Basel in 1519--Froben's circle--Tremendous events
and issues of the time--Holbein's religious works--The Nativity and
Adoration at Freiburg--Hans Oberriedt--The Basel Passion in eight
panels--Passion Drawings--Christ in the tomb--Christ and Mary Magdalen
at the door of the sepulchre--Rathaus wall-paintings--Birth of
Holbein's eldest child--The Solothurn Madonna: its discovery and
rescue--Holbein's wife and her portraits--Suggested solutions of
some biographical enigmas--Title pages--Portraits of Erasmus--Journey
to France, probably to Lyons and Avignon--Publishers and pictures of
the so-called "Dance of Death"--Dorothea Offenburg as Venus and Lais
Corinthiaca--Triumph of the Protestant party--Holbein decides to
leave Basel for a time--The Meyer-Madonna of Darmstadt and Dresden,
and its portraits 45
CHAPTER III
CHANCES AND CHANGES (1526-1530)
First visit to England--Sir Thomas More: his home and portraits--The
Windsor drawings--Bishop Fisher--Archbishop Warham--Bishop
Stokesley--Sir Henry Guildford and his portrait--Nicholas Kratzer--Sir
Bryan Tuke--Holbein's return to Basel--Portrait-group of his wife and
two eldest children; two versions--Holbein's children, and families
claiming descent from him--Iconoclastic fury--Ruined arts--Death of
Meyer zum Hasen--Another Meyer commissions the last paintings for
Basel--Return to England--Description of the Steelyard--Portraits of
its members--George Gysze--Basel Council summons Holbein home--"The
Ambassadors" at the National Gallery; accepted identification--Coronation
of Queen Anne Boleyn--Lost paintings for the Guildhall of the Steelyard;
the Triumphs of Riches and Poverty--The great Morett portrait;
identifications--Holbein's industry and fertility--Designs for
metal-work and other drawings--Solomon and the Queen of Sheba 114
CHAPTER IV
PAINTER ROYAL (1536-1543)
Queen Jane Seymour--Death of Erasmus, and title-page portrait--The
Whitehall painting of Henry VIII.--Munich drawing of Henry VIII.--Birth
of an heir and the "Jane Seymour Cup"--Death of the Queen--Christina,
Duchess of Milan--Secret service for the King--Flying visit to Basel and
arrangements for a permanent return--Apprentices his son Philip at
Paris--Portrait of the Prince of Wales and the King's return gift--Anne
of Cleves--Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk--Catherine Howard--Lapse
of Holbein's Basel citizenship--Irregularities--Provision for wife
and children--Residence in London--Execution of Queen Catherine
Howard--Marriage of Catherine Parr--Dr. Chamber--Unfinished work
for the Barber-Surgeons' Hall--Death of Holbein--His will--Place of
burial--Holbein's genius: its true character and greatness 156
CATALOGUE OF PRINCIPAL EXISTING WORKS 188
REFERENCES 189
INDEX 199
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. HOLBEIN _Frontispiece_
Self Portrait. From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
2. "PROSY" AND "HANS" HOLBEIN 16
Drawn by their father, Hans Holbein the elder. Silver-point.
(Berlin Cabinet.)
3. SCHOOLMASTER'S SIGNBOARD 26
Oils. (Basel Museum.)
4. JACOB MEYER (ZUM HASEN) 31
Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
5. DOROTHEA MEYER (nee KANNEGIESSER) 31
Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
6. BONIFACIUS AMERBACH 46
Oils. (Basel Museum.)
7. FIGHT OF LANDSKNECHTE 58
Washed drawing. (Basel Museum.) From a Photograph in the
Rischgitz Collection.
8. THE NATIVITY 72
Oils. (University Chapel, Freiburg Cathedral.)
From a photograph by G. Roebke, Freiburg.
9. THE PASSION 74
I. GETHSEMANE. II. THE KISS OF JUDAS.
III. BEFORE PONTIUS PILATE. IV. THE SCOURGING.
V. THE MOCKING. VI. THE WAY TO CALVARY.
VII. "IT IS FINISHED." VIII. THE ENTOMBMENT.
Eight-panelled Altar-piece. (Basel Museum.)
10. CHRIST IN THE GRAVE 78
Oils. (Basel Museum.)
11. THE RISEN CHRIST 82
Oils. (Hampton Court Gallery.)
12. THE SOLOTHURN, OR ZETTER'SCHE, MADONNA 86
Oils. (Solothurn Museum.) From a photograph by
Braun, Clement, and Cie., Paris.
13. UNNAMED PORTRAIT-STUDY; NOT CATALOGUED AS HOLBEIN'S 94
Silver-point and Indian ink. (Louvre Collection. Believed
by the writer to be Holbein's drawing of his wife before
her first marriage, and the model for the Solothurn Madonna.)
From a photograph by Braun, Clement, and Cie., Paris.
14. ERASMUS 98
Oils. (The Louvre.) From a photograph by A. Giraudon, Paris.
15. THE PLOUGHMAN; THE PRIEST 102
"Images of Death." Woodcut series.
16. DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS THE GODDESS OF LOVE 104
Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
17. DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS LAIS CORINTHIACA 106
Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
18. THE MEYER-MADONNA 109
Oils. (Grand Ducal Collection, Darmstadt.)
From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
19. THE MEYER-MADONNA 109
(Later Version. Held by many to be a copy.) Oils.
(Dresden Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
20. SIR THOMAS MORE 116
Chalks. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
21. JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER 118
Chalks. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
22. SIR HENRY GUILDFORD 120
Oils. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
23. NICHOLAS KRATZER 122
Oils. (The Louvre.)
24. SIR BRYAN TUKE 124
Oils. (Munich Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
25. ELSBETH, HOLBEIN'S WIFE, WITH THEIR TWO ELDEST CHILDREN 126
Oils. (Basel Museum.) From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
26. "BEHOLD TO OBEY IS BETTER THAN SACRIFICE." SAMUEL DENOUNCING SAUL 134
Washed drawing. (Basel Museum.)
From a photograph in the Rischgitz Collection.
27. JOeRG (OR GEORGE) GYZE 142
Oils. (Berlin Museum.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
28. "THE AMBASSADORS" 146
Oils. (National Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
29. THE MORETT PORTRAIT 152
Oils. (Dresden Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
30. QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR 158
Oils. (Vienna Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
31. KING HENRY VIII. AND HIS FATHER 160
Fragment of cartoon used for the Whitehall wall-painting.
(Duke of Devonshire's Collection.)
32. KING HENRY VIII. 162
(Life Study; probably for the Whitehall Painting.)
Chalks. (Munich Collection.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
33. DESIGN FOR THE "JANE SEYMOUR CUP" 164
(Bodleian Library.)
34. CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN 166
Oils. (National Gallery.) Lent by the Duke of Norfolk.
35. ANNE OF CLEVES 172
Oils. (The Louvre.) From a photograph by A. Giraudon, Paris.
36. THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK 174
Oils. (Windsor Castle.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
37. CATHERINE HOWARD 176
Chalk drawing. (Windsor Castle.)
38. DR. CHAMBER 180
Oils. (Vienna Gallery.) From a photograph by F. Hanfstaengl.
HOLBEIN[1]
CHAPTER I
HOLBEIN'S PERIOD, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY WORK
Historical epoch and antecedents--Special conditions and character
of early Christian art--Ideals and influence of the monk--Holbein's
relation to mediaeval schools--His father, uncle, and Augsburg
home--Probable dates for his birth and his father's death--Troubles
and dispersion of the Augsburg household--From Augsburg to Basel--His
brother Ambrose--Erasmus and the _Praise of Folly_; some erroneous
impressions of both--Erasmus and Holbein no Protestants at
heart--Holbein and the Bible--Illustrated vernacular Bibles in
circulation before Luther and Holbein were born--Holbein's earliest
Basel oil paintings--Direct and indirect education--Historical,
geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--Beginning of
his connection with the Burgomaster of Basel--Jacob Meyer zum
Hasen--Holbein's woodcuts--His studies from nature--Sudden visit to
Lucerne--Italian influence on his art--Work for the Burgomaster
of Lucerne.
The eighty-three years stretching from 1461 to 1543--between the
probable year of the elder Hans Holbein's birth and that in which the
younger, the great Holbein, died--constitute one of those periods which
rightly deserve the much-abused name of an Epoch. The Christian era of
itself had known many: the Yellow-Danger of the fifth century making one
hideous smear across Europe; the _Hic Jacet_ with which this same
century entombed an Empire three continents could not content; the new
impulse which Charlemagne and Alfred had given to Progress in the ninth
century; the triumphant establishment of Papal Supremacy, that Napoleonic
idea of Gregory VII.--_Sanctus Satanas_, of the eleventh, and grand
architect in a vaster Roman Empire which still "humanly contends for
glory"; and lastly, at the very threshold of the Holbeins, the invention
of movable printing types about 1440, and the fall of Constantinople in
1453, which combined to drive the prodigies and potencies of Greek
genius through the world.
Each of these had done its own special work for the advancement
of man--as for that matter all things must, whether by help or
helplessness. Not less than Elijah did the wretched priests of Baal
serve those slow, sure, eternal Purposes, which include an Ahab and all
the futile fury of his little life as the sun includes its "spots."
But although the stream of History is one, and its every succeeding
curve only an expansion of the first, there has probably been no century
of our era when this stream has been so suddenly enlarged, or bent so
sharply toward fresh constellations as in that of the Holbeins,--when
Religion and Art, as well as Science, saw a New World upon its astonished
horizon. So that we properly call it a transition period, and its
representative men "transitional."
Yet we shall never get near to these real men, to their real world, unless
we can forget all about the pose of this or the other Zeitgeist--that tale
_Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing._
For we must keep constantly in mind that what we call the Middle Ages
or--worse yet--the Dark Ages, made up the Yesterday of the Holbeins and
was the flesh and blood transmitted to them as their own flesh and blood
with all its living bonds toward the Old and all its living impulses
toward the New.
A now famous New Zealander is, we know, to sketch our own "mediaevalism"
with contemptuous pity for its darkness. But until his day comes, our
farthing-dips seem to make a gaudy illumination. And, meantime, we are
alive; we walk about; we, too, can swell the chorus which the Initiated
chant in every century with the same fond confidence: "We alone enjoy
the Holy Light."
The New is ever becoming old; the old ever changing into New. And if we
ask why each waxes or wanes just when it does and as it does, there is,
in the last analysis, no better answer than Aurora's explanation for
chancing on the poets--
_Because the time was ripe._
And the Holbein century is one of stupendous Transitions because the
time was ripe; and not simply because printing was invented, or Greek
scholars were driven from Constantinople to scatter abroad in Europe, or
Ferdinand and Isabella wanted a direct route to Cathay, or Friar Martin
nailed ninety-five Theses to the door of Wittenberg's church, and built
himself thereby an everlasting name as Luther.
And because the time was ripe for a new Art, even more than because this
or that great painter entrained it, it also had its transition period,
and Holbein is set down in manuals as a transitional painter. Teutonic,
too; because all Christian art is either Byzantine or Italian or
Teutonic in its type.
When it first crept from the catacombs under the protection of the
Constantinople Court it could but be Byzantine; that strange composite
obtained by stripping the Greek "beast" of every pagan beauty and then
decking it out with crude Oriental ornament. But who that prizes the
peculiar product of that fanaticism would have had its cradle without
this sleepless terror, lest for the whole world of classic heathendom
it should lose the dear-bought soul of purely Christian ideals? Or who,
remembering that in thus relentlessly sacrificing its entire heritage of
pagan accumulation it put back the clock of Art to the Stone Age, and
had to begin all over again in the helpless bewilderment of untaught
childish effort,--could find twice ten centuries too long for the
astounding feat it achieved? Ten centuries, after all, make but a
marvellous short course betwixt the archaic compositions of the third
century and the compositions of Giotto or Wilhelm Meister.
A great deal of nonsense is talked about the "tyrannies" which the
Monastic Age inflicted on Art. Of course, monasticism fostered fanaticism.
It does not need the luminous genius that said it, to teach us that
"whatever is necessary to what we make our sole object is sure, in some
way or in some time or other, to become our master." And with the monk,
the true monk in his day of usefulness, every knowledge and every art
was good or bad according as it served monastic ideals. But it is absurd
to say that the monk--_qua_ monk--"put the intellect in chains." The
whole body of his oppression was not so paralysing as the iron little
finger of Malherbe and his school of "classic" despots. To charge upon
the monk the limitations of his crude thought and cruder methods is
about as intelligent as it would be to fall foul of Shakespeare because
boys played his women's parts.
The springs of Helicon were the monk's also, as witness Tuotilo and
Bernard of Clairvaux; but it was by the waters of Jordan that his
miracles were wrought. As Johnson somewhere says of Watts, "every kind
of knowledge was by the piety of his mind converted into theology." And
for the rest,--by the labour of his hands, by his fasting from the
things of the flesh, by his lofty faith--however erring or forgotten or
betrayed, in individual cases,--by every impressive lesson of a hard
life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century
after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of
every land to turn the desolate freedom of the wild ass into a smiling
homestead and the savage Africa of his own heart into at least a better
place. The marvel is that he could at the same time find room or energy
to make his monastery also a laboratory, a library, and a studio. And
yet he did.
To say that he abhorred Greek ideals is to say that the shepherd abhors
the wolf. His life was one long fight with the insidious poison of the
Greek. He did not,--at any rate in his best days--believe at all in Art
for Art's sake; and had far too intimate an acquaintance with the
"natural man" to do him even justice. What he wanted was to do away with
him.
Yet with all its repellent features, it is to this unflinching
exclusiveness of the monkish ideal that we owe one of the most exquisite
blossoms on the stock of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--their
innocent and appealing art; an art as original and as worthy of reverence,
within its own peculiar province, as the masterpieces of Greece or
Italy. You must turn from the beauty of Antinous to the beauty of, say,
the Saint Veronica, among the works of the Cologne school at Munich,
before you can estimate the Gulf of many things besides time which for
ever divides the world of the one from the world of the other. And
then you must essay to embody the visions of Patmos with a child's
colour-box and brushes, before you can compare the achievements--the
amazing achievements--of the monkish ideal with the achievements of
classic paganism.
With the school of Wilhelm Meister this tremendous revolution had
accomplished itself; and solely through the indomitable will of the
monk. The ideal of Greece had been to show how gods walk the earth. This
Christian ideal was to show how devout men and women walk with God.
Their ineffable heavenly faces look out from their golden world--
_Inviolate, unwearied,
Divinest, sweetest, best,_
upon this far-off, far other world, where nothing is inviolate, and
divinest things must come at last to tears and ashes.
But the monk had had his day as well as his way. The so-called Gothic
architecture had expressed its uttermost of aspiration and tenuity; and
painting had fulfilled its utmost accommodation to the ever more slender
wall-spaces and forms which this architecture necessitated. And once
again, in the fifteenth century, the time was ripe for a new transition.
Art was now to reveal the realities of this world, and to concern itself
with Man among them. And just as the law of reaction flung the mind
into religious revolt from the outworn dogmas and overgrown pretensions
of the monkish ideal, so did it drive the healthy reaction of art into
its own extravagances of protest. And we shall see how even a genius
like Holbein's was unable to entirely free itself from this reactionary
defect. For with all his astonishing powers, imaginative and technical,
he never wholly overcame that defect of making his figures too short and
too thick-set for grace, which amounted to a deformity in the full-length
figures of his early work, and was due to his fierce revolt from the
unnaturally elongated forms of an earlier period.
Yet we should make a grave mistake if we were to regard Holbein as cut
off by this reaction from all affinities with the monkish ideals of
the Cologne school. On the contrary. We shall see, especially in his
religious pictures, how many of those ideals had fed the very springs of
his imagination and sunk deep into his art; only expressing themselves
in his own symbolism and in forms unlike theirs.
* * * * *
In the Augsburg Gallery there is a painting by Holbein's father, the
"Basilica of St. Paul," in which there is a group introduced after the
fashion of the period, which has a special biographical interest. This
group, in the Baptism of St. Paul, is believed by many authorities to be
a portrait-group of the painter himself,--Hans Holbein the Elder, and
his two young sons, Ambrose (or Amprosy, as it was often written) and
Johannes, or "Hanns." The portrait of the father is certainly like
Holbein's own drawing of him in the Duke d'Aumale's Collection, which
Sandrart engraved in his account of the younger Holbein; while the heads
of the two boys are very like those which we shall find later in a
drawing in the Berlin Gallery. From the pronounced way in which his
father's hand rests on little Hans' head, while the left points him
out,--and even his elder brother "Prosy" shows by his attitude the
special notice to be taken of Hans,--it is clear that if this is a
portrait-group either it was painted when the boys were actually older,
or the younger had already given some astonishing proof of that precocity
which his early works display; for in this group the younger boy cannot
be more than eight or nine years old.
Hans Holbein the Elder, who stands here with his long brown hair and
beard falling over his fur gown, was a citizen of Augsburg, living for
a while in the same street with the honoured Augsburg painter, Hans
Burgkmair, and occasionally working with him on large commissions. That
he was a native of Augsburg, and the son--as is generally believed--of
"Michel Holbain" (Augsburg commonly spelt _Holbein_ with an _a_),
leather-dresser--I myself cannot feel so sure as others do. There is no
documentary evidence to prove that the Michael Holbein of Augsburg ever
had a son, and there is both documentary and circumstantial evidence to
prove that the descendants of Hans Holbein the Elder claimed a different
origin. That a man was a "citizen," or burgher, of any town, of course
proves nothing. It was a period when painters especially learned their
trades and practised it in many centres. And this, when guilds were
all-powerful and no one could either join one without taking citizenship
with it, or pursue its calling in any given place without association
with the guild of that place, often involved a series of citizenships.
The elder Holbein was himself a burgher of Ulm at one time, if not of
other cities in which he worked.
But that Augsburg was his fixed home for the greater part of his life is
certain; and the rate-books show that after the leather-dresser had
disappeared from their register of residents in the retail business
quarter of the city, in the neighbourhood of the Lech canals, Hans
Holbein the Elder was, in 1494, a householder in this very place. For
some years the name of "Sigmund, his brother," is bracketed with his;
but about 1517 Sigmund Holbein established himself in Berne, where he
accumulated a very respectable competence, which, at his death in 1540,
he bequeathed to his "dear nephew, Hans Holbein, the painter," at that
time a citizen of Basel. Sigmund also was a painter, but no unquestioned
work of his is known.
There is nothing to show who was the wife of Sigmund Holbein's elder
brother, Hans. But by 1499 this elder Hans had either a child or
children mentioned with him (_sein kind_, applying equally to one or
more). In all probability this is the earliest discoverable record
of Hans Holbein the Younger, and his elder brother Ambrose. In all
probability, too, Hans was then about two years old, and "Prosy" a year
or two older. At one time it was vaguely thought that the elder Hans had
three sons; and Prosy, or "Brosie," as it was sometimes written, got
converted into a "Bruno" Holbein. But no vestige of an actual Bruno is
to be found. And as Ambrose Holbein's trail, whether in rate-books or
art-records, utterly vanishes after 1519, it will be seen that for the
most part of the younger Holbein's life he had no brother. Hence it is
easy to understand how his uncle Sigmund's Will speaks only of "my dear
nephew."
Hans the elder lived far on in his younger son's life. His works attest
that he had talents and ideals of no mean order. But I do not propose
to enter here upon the vexed question as to how far the "Renaissance"
characteristics of the later works attributed to his hand are his own or
his son's. Learned and exhaustive arguments have by turns consigned the
best of these works to the father, to the son, and back again to the
father. In at least one instance of high authority the same writer has,
at different periods, held a brief for both sides and for opposite
opinions! In this connection, as on the battlefield of some of the
son's greatest paintings, the single-minded student of Holbein may not
unprofitably draw three conclusions from the copious literature on the
subject:--First, that a working hypothesis is not of necessity the right
one; secondly, that in the matter of his pronouncements the critical
expert also may occasionally be regarded as
_Un animal qui s'habille, deshabille et babille toujours;_
and thirdly, that in default of incontestable documentary proofs the
modest "so far as I have been able to discover" of Holbein's first
biographer, Van Mander, is a capital anchor to windward, and is at
any rate preferable to driving forth upon the howling waters of
Classification, like Constance upon the Sea of Greece, "Alle sterelesse,
God wot."
But my chief reason for not pursuing the Protean phantom of Holbein's
Augsburg period is that,--apart from my own disagreement with many
accepted views about the works it includes, and the utter lack of
data or determining any position irrefutably,--it is comparatively
unimportant to the purpose of this little book. For wherever the younger
painter was born,--whether at Augsburg or Ulm or elsewhere,--and
whatever I believe to be his rightful claim to such paintings as the St.
Elizabeth and St. Barbara of the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich,
Fame, like Van Mander, has rightly written him down Holbein
_Basiliensis_.
It is true that his father's brushes were his alphabet. It may be true,
though I doubt it, that his father's teaching was his only technical
school. But if he was, as to the last he gloried in being, the child of
the Old Period, he was much more truly the immediate pupil of the Van
Eycks than of his father's irresolute ideals; while Basel was his
university. And whatever may have been his debt to those childish years
when the little Iulus followed his father with trembling steps, his
debt to Basel was immensely greater. The door-sill of Johann Froben's
printing-house was the threshold of his earthly immortality.
When he turned his back on the low-vaulted years of Augsburg, it was
because for him also the time was ripe. The Old Period had cast his
genius; the New was to expand it to new powers and purposes.
_Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new;
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretch'd in his last-found home and knew the old no more._
* * * * *
It may easily have been the elder Hans' continuous troubles, whether due
to his fault or his misfortune it is idle now to inquire, which made his
sons leave Augsburg. Certain it is that he but escaped from the clutches
of one suit for debt after another in order to tumble into some fresh
disaster of the sort, until his own brother Sigmund appears among his
exasperated creditors. After 1524 Hans Holbein the Elder vanishes from
the records. Probably, therefore, it was at about this date that he
paid,--Heaven and himself only knowing how willingly,--the one debt
which every man pays at the last.
At all events his sons did leave Augsburg about 1514; or, at any rate,
Hans did, since there is a naive little Virgin and Child in the Basel
Museum, dated 1514, which must have been painted in the neighbourhood of
Constance in this year,--probably for the village church where it was
discovered. As everything points to the conclusion that Holbein was born
in 1497, he would have been some seventeen years old at this time, and
"Prosy" eighteen or nineteen. Substantially, therefore, they must have
looked pretty much as in the drawing which their father had made of them
three years before; that precious drawing in silver-point which is now
in the Berlin Collection (Plate 2). Over the elder, still with the curly
locks of the group in the "St. Paul Basilica," is written _Prosy_; over
the younger, _Hanns_. The age of the latter, fourteen, may still be
deciphered above his portrait, but that of Ambrose has quite vanished.
Between the two is the family name, written in Augsburg fashion,
Holbain. At the top of the sheet stands the year of the drawing, almost
illegible, but believed to be 1511.
Illustration: PLATE 2
"PROSY" AND "HANNS" _HOLBAIN_
[_Drawn by their father, Hans Holbein the elder_]
_Silver-point. Berlin Cabinet_
Of the elder brother all that is certainly known may be said here once
for all. In 1517 he entered the Painters' Guild at Basel, where he is
called "Ambrosius Holbein, citizen of Augsburg." He made a number of
designs for wood-engraving, title-pages, and ornaments, for the printers
of Basel--all of fair merit. He may also have worked in the studio of
Hans Herbster, a Basel painter of considerable note. Herbster's portrait
in oils, long held to be a fine work of the younger brother,--now that
it has passed from the Earl of Northbrook's collection to that of the
Basel Museum, is attributed to Ambrose Holbein. But little else is known
of him; and after 1519, as has been said, the absence of any record of
him among the living suggests that he died in that year.
In the late summer of 1515 came that momentous trifle which has for ever
linked the name of young Hans Holbein with that of Erasmus. Whether, as
some say, the scholar gave him the order, or, as seems more likely, some
friend of both had the copy, now in the Basel Museum, on the margins of
which the lad drew his spirited pen-and-ink sketches,--it is on record
that they were made before the end of December, and that Erasmus himself
was delighted with their wit and vigour. And, in truth, they are
exceedingly clever, both in the art with which a few strokes suggest a
picture, and in that by which the picture emphasises every telling point
in the satire. But a great deal too much has been built upon both the
satire and the sketches; a great deal, also, falsely built upon them.
They have been made to do duty, in default of all genuine proofs, as
supports to the theory by which Protestant writers have claimed both
Erasmus and Holbein as followers of Luther in their hearts, without
sufficient courage or zeal to declare themselves such. I confess that,
though myself no less ardent as a Protestant than as an admirer of
Holbein, I cannot, for the life of me, see any justification for either
the claim or its implied charge of timorousness.
Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_--like so many a paradox started as a
joke,--had no notion of being serious at all until it was seriously
attacked. Some four years before its illustrations riveted the name of a
stripling artist to that of the world-renowned scholar, Erasmus had
fallen ill while a guest in the sunny Bucklersbury home where three tiny
daughters and a baby son were the darlings of Sir Thomas More and his
wife. To beguile the tedium of convalescence the invalid had scribbled
off a jeu d'esprit, with its punning play on More's name, _Encomium
Moriae_, in which every theme for laughter, in a far from squeamish day,
was collected under that title. Read aloud to More and his friends, it
was declared much too good to be limited to private circulation; and
accordingly, with some revision and expansion, it was printed. That it
scourged with its mockery those things in both Church and State which
Erasmus and More and many another fervent Churchman hated,--such as the
crying evils which called aloud for reformation in the highest places,
and above all, that it lashed the detested friars whom the best churchmen
most loathed,--these things were foregone conclusions in such a
composition. But a laugh, even a satirical laugh, at the expense of
excrescences or follies in one's camp, is a very far cry from going over
to its foes. As a huge joke Erasmus wrote the _Praise of Folly_; as such
More and all his circle lauded it; as such Froben reprinted it; and as
such young Holbein pointed all its laughing gibes.
And it was part and parcel of the joke that he launched his own sly
arrow at the author himself. Erasmus could but laugh at the adroitness
with which the young man from Augsburg had drawn a reverend scholar
writing away at his desk, among the votaries of Folly, and written
_Erasmus_ over his head. But it was hardly to be expected that he should
altogether relish the witty implication, or the presumption of the
unknown painter who had ventured to make it. Nor did he. Turning over a
page he also contrived to turn the laugh yet once again, this time
against the too-presuming artist. Finding, perhaps, the coarsest of the
sketches, one in keeping with the "fat and splendid pig from the drove
of Epicurus," he in his turn wrote the name of _Holbein_ above the
wanton boor at his carousals. It was a reprisal not more delicate than
the spirit with which subjects too sacred to have been named in the same
breath with Folly,--the very words of our Lord Himself,--had been
dragged into such company. But though it, too, was a joke, this little
slap of wounded amour propre has found writers to draw from it an entire
theory that Holbein led a life of debauchery!
Yet even this feat of deduction is surpassed by that which argues that
because Erasmus and Holbein lashed bad prelates and vicious monks with
satire, therefore they detested the whole hierarchy of Rome and loathed
all monks, good or bad. "Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched" is
the oft-repeated cry; forgetting or ignoring the plain fact that Erasmus
eyed the Lutheran egg with no little mistrust in its shell and with
unequivocal disgust in its full-feathered development. "What connection
have I with Luther," he writes some three years after Holbein illustrated
Stultitia's worshippers, "or what recompense have I to expect from him
that I should join with him to oppose the Church of Rome, which I take
to be the true part of the Church Catholic, or to oppose the Roman
Pontiff who is the head of the Catholic Church? I am not so impious as
to dissent from the Church nor so ungrateful as to dissent from Leo,
from whom I have received uncommon favour and indulgence."
As to Holbein's "Protestant sympathies"--using the name for the whole
Lutheran movement in which Protestantism had its rise,--the assertions
are even less grounded in fact, if that be possible. If he had it not
already in his heart, through Erasmus and Amerbach and Froben and More
and every other great influence to which he yielded himself at all, he
early acquired a deep and devout sense of the need of reform _within_
the Church. Like all these lifelong friends, he wanted to see the Church
of Rome return to her purer days and cast off the corruptions of a
profligate idleness. Like them he couched his lance against the unworthy
priest, the gluttonous or licentious monk, the wolves in sheep's clothing
that were destroying the fold from within. Like them, as they re-echoed
Colet--the saintly Dean of St. Paul's,--he passionately favoured the
translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular and placing them in
the hands, or at any rate bringing them to the familiar knowledge, of
peasant as well as prelate. But surely one must know very little of the
teachings of the stoutest Churchmen of Holbein's day and acquaintance
not to know also that they encouraged if they did not plant these
opinions in his mind.
"Duerer's woodcuts and engravings, especially his various scenes from the
Passion," writes even Woltmann, the biographer to whom every student of
Holbein owes so grateful a debt, "had prepared the soil among the people
for Luther's translation of the Bible. Holbein's pictures from the Old
Testament followed in their wake, and helped forward the work." Yet it
seems difficult to suppose that Woltmann could have been ignorant of
the facts of the case. So far were Holbein's, or any other artist's,
Bible illustrations or Bible pictures from arguing a "Lutheran" monopoly
in the vernacular Bible, that in Germany alone there were fifteen
translated and illustrated editions of the Bible before Luther's
appeared; and of these fifteen some half-dozen were published before
Luther was born. Quentell, at Cologne, for instance, published a famous
translation with exceedingly good woodcuts in 1480,--three years before
Luther's birth. While some nine years before Quentell's German
translation, the Abbot Niccolo Malermi published his _Biblia Vulgare_ in
the Italian vernacular, which went through twenty editions in less than
a century: one of which,--brought out at Venice in 1490 by the Giunta
Brothers,--was illustrated by woodcuts of the greatest beauty. So
widespread was the demand for this "Malermi Bible" that another edition,
with new illustrations of almost equal merit, was produced at Venice in
1493, by the printer known as _Anima Mia_. All of these were vernacular
Bibles; all illustrated; all widely known throughout Italy and Germany
before Holbein was born or Luther was in his tenth year. And certainly
it has not yet been suggested by the most rabid Protestantism that
either these or any of the many other illustrated vernacular Bibles
printed long before Luther's great translation,--a translation with a
special claim to immortality because it may be said to have set the
standard for modern German,--were anything but Roman Catholic Bibles.
They were translated and illustrated in behalf of no doctrine which
Protestantism does not hold in common with the Church of Rome.
To lose hold of these things, to lose sight of the true attitude of
Holbein in his Bible woodcuts and his "Images of Death," or of either
Erasmus or Holbein in their satires on the flagrant abuses within their
Church, and their unwavering devotion to that Church,--is to deliberately
throw away the clue to the most vital qualities in the work of either,
and to the whole course and character of Holbein himself, no less than
to that of his lifelong friend and benefactor.
* * * * *
In 1515 the young painter who had come to Basel to better his fortunes
painted a table for Hans Baer's wedding. The bridegroom marched away,
carrying the Basel colours, to the bloody field of Marignano (or
Melegnano) in this same year, and never came back to sit with his
smiling bride around Holbein's most amusing conceits--where "Saint
Nobody" was depicted among all the catastrophes of which he is the
scapegoat, and a few ordinary trifles--a letter, a pair of spectacles,
etc.--were marvellously represented, as if dropped by chance above the
painted decorations, so that people were always attempting to pick them
up. But Hans Baer's sister had been the first wife of a certain brave
comrade--Meyer "of the Hare," who did come back and played an important
part in young Holbein's career. Long lost among forgotten rubbish, Hans
Baer's table has been unearthed, and is now preserved in the town library
at Zurich.
But although Holbein had got his foot on the ladder of fame in this
year's beginning of his connection with Froben, he was as yet very
thankful to accept any commission, however humble. And as a human
document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about
the Schoolmaster's Signboard preserved by Bonifacius Amerbach, and now
with his collection in the Basel Museum (Plate 3). It is a simple thing,
with no pretension to a place among "works of art"--this bit of flotsam
from 1516, when it was painted. Originally the two views, the Infant
Class and the Adult Class, were on opposite sides of the sign; but they
have been carefully split apart so as to be seen side by side. In the
one is the quaint but usual Dame's School of the period; in the other
the public is informed how the adults of Basel may retrieve the lack of
such early opportunities. The inscription above each sets forth how
whosoever wishes to do so can be taught to read and write correctly, and
be furnished with all the essentials of a decent education at a very
moderate cost; "children on the usual terms." And there is a delightful
clause to say that "if anyone is too dull-witted to learn at all, no
payment will be accepted, be it Burger or Apprentice, Wife or Maid."
Somehow, looking at the young fellow at the right of the table, in the
Adult Class, sitting facing the anxious schoolmaster, with his own brow
all furrowed by the effort to follow him and his mouth doggedly set to
succeed,--while the late, low sun of a summer afternoon streams in
through the leaded window,--one muses on the chance that so may the young
painter from Augsburg, now but nineteen, himself have sat upon this very
bench and leaned across this very table, in a like determination to
widen out his small store of book-learning. He could have had little
opportunity to do so in the ever-shifting, bailiff-haunted home of his
boyhood. And somewhere he certainly learned to write quite as well as
even the average gentleman of his day; witness the notes on his
drawings.
Illustration: PLATE 3
SCHOOLMASTER'S SIGNBOARD
_Oils. Basel Museum_
Somewhere, too, and no later than these first Basel years, he acquired
the power to read and appreciate even the niceties of Latin, though
he probably could not have done more than make these out to his own
satisfaction. All his work of illustration is too original, too
spontaneous, too full of flashes of subtle personal sympathy with the
text, to have emanated from an interpreter, or been dictated by another
mind than his own. And this very Signboard may have paid for lessons
which he could not otherwise afford. For if there is any force in
circumstantial evidence it is certain that Holbein not only wrote,
but read and pondered and thought for himself in these years when
he doubtless had many more hours of leisure than he desired, from a
financial standpoint.
And the greatest pages of his autobiography, written with his brush,
will be only so many childish rebuses if we forget what astounding pages
of History and Argument were turned before him. In Augsburg he had seen
the Emperor Maximilian riding in state more than once, and heard much
talk about that Emperor's interests and schemes and fears; and of
thrones and battlefields engaged with or against these. Augsburg was in
closest ties of commerce with Venice; and the tides of many a tremendous
issue of civilisation rolled to and fro through the gates of the Free
Swabian City.
Child and lad, his was a precocious intelligence; and it had been fed
upon meat for strong men. He had heard of Alexander VI.'s colossal
infamies, and those of Caesar Borgia as well; and of the kingdoms ranging
to this or that standard after the death of Pope and Prince. He was nine
years old then. Old enough, too, to drink in the wonderful hero-tales
of one Christopher Columbus of Genoa, whose fame was running through
the Whispering Gallery of Europe, while he himself lay dying at
Valladolid--ill, heartbroken, poor, disgraced,--yet proudly confident
that he had demonstrated, past all denial, the truth of his own
conviction, and touched the shores of Cathay, sailing westward from
Spain. Da Gama, Vespucci, Balboa, Magellan,--theirs were indeed names
and deeds to set the heart of youth leaping, between its cradle and its
twenty-fifth year.
Holbein was twelve when Augsburg heard that England had a young king,
whom it crowned as Henry VIII. He was setting out from his home, such as
it was, to fight his own boyish battle of Life, when the news spread of
Flodden's Field. None of these things would let such an one as he was
rest content to apprehend them as a yokel. From either the honest dominie
of the Signboard or some other, we may be sure he sought the means to
read and digest them for himself. And if he learnt some smattering of
the geography of the earth and the heavens after the crude notions of
an older day, he could have done no other, at that time, in the most
enlightened Universities. Ptolemy's _Geographia_ was still the text-book,
and the so-called "Ptolemaic Theory" still the astronomical creed of
scholars. Copernicus was, indeed, a man of forty when Holbein was
painting this Signboard in 1516. But Copernicus was still interluding
the active duties of Frauenburg's highly successful governor,
tax-collector, judge, and vicar-general,--to say nothing of his
brilliant essays on finance,--with those studies in his watch-tower
which were to revolutionise the astronomical conceptions of twenty
centuries and wheel the Earth around the Sun instead of the Sun around
the Earth. But his system was not actually published until its author
was on his death-bed, in the year of Holbein's own death. So that these
stupendous new ideas were only the unpublished rumours and discussions
of circles like that of Froben and Erasmus, when Holbein first entered
it.
But it is no insignificant sidelight on the history of this circle and
this period to recall that the subversive theories of Copernicus,--far
as even he was from anticipating how a Kepler and a Newton should one
day shatter the "Crystalline Spheres," and relegate to the dustheap of
antiquity the "Epicycles," to which he still clung,--had their only
generous hearing from influential churchmen of Rome. Luther recoiled
from them as the blasphemies of "an arrogant fool"; and even Melanchthon
urged that they should be "suppressed by the secular arm." Nor let it be
forgotten that these matters were never a far cry from those Basel
printing-presses where the greatest master-printers were themselves
thorough and eager scholars; "Men of Letters," in the noblest sense of
the word. And the discussion of all these high concerns of history and
letters was as much a part of the daily life surging around their
printing-presses as the roar of the Rhine was in the air of Basel.
Illustration: PLATE 4
JACOB MEYER (ZUM HASEN)
_Oils. Basel Museum_
Illustration: PLATE 5
DOROTHEA MEYER (_nee_ KANNEGIESSER)
_Oils. Basel Museum_
As has been said, the sister of that Hans Baer for whom Holbein painted
the "St. Nobody" table had been the first wife, Magdalena Baer--a widow
with one daughter, when she married him--of Jacob Meyer,[2] "of the
Hare" (_zum Hasen_). Magdalena died in 1511, and about 1512 Meyer zum
Hasen married Dorothea Kannegiesser. And now in 1516, a memorable year
to Holbein on account of this influential patron, the young stranger was
commissioned to paint the portraits of Meyer (Plate 4) and his second
wife, Dorothea (Plate 5). These oil paintings, and the drawings for
them, are now in the Basel Museum. And no one can examine them,
remembering that the painter was but nineteen, without echoing the
exclamation of a brilliant French writer: "Holbein ira beaucoup plus
loin dans son art, mais deja il est superbe." These warm translucent
browns are instinct with life and beauty.
Against the rich Renaissance architecture and the blue of the sky-vista
the massive head of Meyer and the blonde one of his young wife,--the
latter so expressive of half-proud, half-shy consciousness,--stand out
in wonderful vigour. From the scarlet cap on his thickly curling
brown hair to the piece of money between his thumb and finger, the
Burgomaster's picture is a virile and masterly portrait. And just as
forcefully is the charm of his pretty wife,--with all her bravery
of scarlet frock, gold embroidery, head-dress and chains,--her own
individual charm. They are both as much themselves in this fine
architectural setting as in their own good house "of the Hare" which
adjoined the rising glories of the new Renaissance "Council Hall"
(_Rathaus_) in which Meyer was to preside so often.
In 1516 he had just been elected Mayor for the first time; but after
this he had many consecutive re-elections in the alternate years which
permitted this. For no burgomaster could hold office for two years in
actual succession. Previous to being Mayor he had been an eminent
personage as master of the guilds. And both before and after his
mayoralty he was a distinguished soldier,--rising from ensign to captain
in the Basel contingent which served at different times among the
Auxiliaries of France and of the Pope.
But what made this election of 1516 a civic epoch was that Meyer zum
Hasen (there were many unrelated Meyers in Basel, and two among
Holbein's patrons, who must be carefully distinguished according to the
name of the house each occupied) was the first Burgomaster ever elected
in this city from below the knightly rank. While the piece of money in his
hand, far from fulfilling the absurd purpose sometimes suggested,--that
of showing his claim to wealth!--marks another civic event of this year.
For it was on the 10th of January, 1516, that the Emperor Maximilian had
just issued the Charter which gave to Basel the right to mint her own
gold coins. In the painting the pose of Meyer's right hand has been
altered, and the position which Holbein originally gave it can still be
made out. The monogram and date are on the background.
In accordance with his invariable rule for portraits in oils, Holbein
first made a careful drawing of each head on the same scale as the
finished picture, carrying it out with great freedom but at the same
time with astonishing care and finish. So that his studies for portraits
are themselves works of art, sometimes invested with even more spirit
than the oil painting, which was never made direct from the living
model,--at any rate, until ready for the finishing touches. Drawn with
a point which could give a line as bold or as almost impalpable as he
wished, and modelled to the very texture of the surfaces, the carnations
are so sufficiently indicated or rendered with red chalk as to serve
every purpose. Sometimes notes are also added. Thus in the upper corner
of the drawing for Meyer's head the artist has noted "eyebrows lighter
than the hair" in his microscopic yet firm writing.
With these fine portraits, painted as if united by the same architectural
background, Holbein began a friendship of many years. After some four
centuries it is not possible to produce written records of such ties
except in occasional corroborative details. But neither is it possible
to mistake the painted records of repeated commissions. While as the
lifelong leader of the Catholic party in Basel, it was natural that
Meyer zum Hasen should have much in common with a painter who all his
life held firmly to his friendships with the most conspicuous champions
of that party.
Johann Froben was another of these; and from 1515 until Froben's death
eleven years later Holbein had more and more to do for this printer.
Occasionally, too, he drew for other Basel printers; but not often. The
eighty-two sketches on the margins of that priceless copy of the _Praise
of Folly_, which Basel preserves in her Museum, had been suited to their
company. Admirable, though unequal, as are their merits, they _are_
sketches, whose chief beauty is their happy spontaneity. Such things are
among the trifles of art, and are not to be put into the scales at all
with the finished perfection of his serious designs for wood engraving.
These were drawn on the block; and even these cannot properly represent
the drawing itself except when cut by some such master hand as his own.
Since in preparing the design for printing the background is cut away,
leaving the composition itself in lines of relief,--it follows that
everything, so far as the reproduction is concerned, must depend upon
the cleanness and delicacy of the actual cutting. A clouded eye, a
fumbling touch, and the most ethereal idea becomes its travesty--the
purest line debased. Hence the necessity for taking the knife into
consideration in judging such work.
This is not the place for any fraction of that hot debate which Kugler
ironically styles "the great question of the sixteenth century"; the
debate as to whether Holbein himself did or did not cut any of his own
blocks. Assuredly he could do so. The exquisite adjustment of every
line to its final purpose, the masterly understanding of the proper
limitations and field of every effect, all prove that he had an unerring
knowledge of the craft no less than of the art of Illustration. But in
his day that craft, like every other, had its own guild; and it would
not have been likely to tolerate any intrusion on its rights.
We know, too, that those woodcuts which most attest Holbein's genius
were engraved by that mysterious "Hans Luetzelburger, form-cutter, called
Franck" (_Hans Luetzelburger, Formschnider, genannt Franck_), who still
remains, after all the researches of enthusiastic admirers, a hand and a
name, and beyond this--nothing. But it is when Holbein's designs are
engraved with Luetzelburger's astonishingly beautiful cutting that we can
appreciate how wonderful was the design itself. To compare these fairy
pictures with the painter's large cartoons is to get some conception of
the arc his powers described. It seems incredible that the same hand
could hang an equal majesty on the wall of a tiny shell and on that of a
king's palace, and with equal justness of eye. Yet it is done. He will
ride a donkey or an elephant with the like mastery; but you will never
find Holbein saddling the donkey with a howdah.
It is not always possible to subscribe to Ruskin's flowing judgments;
but I gratefully borrow the one with which he sums up thus, in a lecture
on wood-engraving: Holbein does not give many gradations of light, the
speaker says, "but not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he
chooses. He is twenty times a stronger master of it than Rembrandt; but
therefore he knows exactly when and how to use it, and that wood-engraving
is not the proper means for it. The quantity of it which is needful for
his story he will give, and that with an unrivalled subtlety."
And the student of Holbein's art can but feel that Ruskin has here
touched upon a characteristic of the painter's peculiar power in every
phase of it;--the power to be Caesar within himself; to say to his hand,
"thus far," to say to his fancy, "no farther." Those who have come to
know Holbein something more than superficially, or as a mere maker of
portraits, will smile at the dictum of some very recent "authority"
which pronounces him wanting in imagination; or at the hasty conclusion
that what he _would_ not, that he could not.
He has given us, for instance, no animal paintings or landscapes pure
and simple, or, at least, none such have come down to us. And yet what
gems of landscape he has touched into his backgrounds here and there!
And what drawings of animal life he made! There are two, for instance,
in the Basel Museum which could not be surpassed; studies in silver-point
and water-colours of lambs and a bat outstretched. No reproduction could
give the exquisite texture of the bat's wings, the wandering red veins,
the almost diaphanous membrane, the furry body,--a miracle of patience
and softness. It is all purest Nature. Like Topsy one can but "'spec' it
growed" rather than was created.
And they are not only beautiful in themselves but full of living
meanings. Many an hour the young painter enjoyed while he made such
studies as his lambs on the pleasant slopes about Basel; the mountains
scalloping the horizon, and all the sweet fresh winds vocal with
tinkling bells or the chant of the deep-throated Rhine. Many of "the
long, long thoughts" of youth,--those thoughts that ring like happy
bells or sweep like rushing rivers, kept him company as he laid these
delicate strokes and washes that seem to exhale the very breath of
morning across four hundred years.
In the next year after painting the portraits of Meyer and his wife
there is a sudden break in the painter's story which has always puzzled
his biographers. After such a brilliant start in Basel it is perplexing
to find the young man, instead of proceeding to join the Painters' Guild
and take the necessary citizenship, suddenly turn his back on all these
encouragements and leave the town for a long absence and remote journeys.
As will be seen when we come to consider the story of Holbein's married
life, however, I have a theory that the influence which sent him south
in such an unexpected fashion was apart from professional affairs.
Whether this is a good shot or no, certain it is that he did now go far
south,--as distances were in those days; and that, paying his way as he
went by his brush, he went first to Lucerne, where the evidence goes to
show that he apparently thought of settling instead of at Basel,--and
then on beyond it. And it seems highly probable that at this time he
pushed on over the Alps and made his way into Italy,--already the Mecca
of every artist.
Here he could not now, in 1517, have hoped to see either Bramante or
Leonardo da Vinci in person. The former had died at Rome two years
before; but, without getting even as far as Pavia, Milan could show some
splendid monuments to his sojourn within her walls; characteristic
examples of that architecture of the closing fifteenth century which
Holbein loved as Bramante himself. Leonardo was now in France; but in
the refectory of the Santa Maria Monastery was his immortal, though,
alas! not imperishable, masterpiece--"The Last Supper." Time had not
yet taught Leonardo, much less Holbein, the fleeting nature of mural
oil-painting; the only so-called "fresco" painting which the latter ever
attempted, so far as is known. But the great Supper was still glowing in
all the splendour of its original painting, and would impress itself
indelibly on an eye such as Holbein's. In more than one cathedral, too,
as he wandered in such a holiday, he would have noted how Mantegna had
made its architecture the background for his own individual genius.
At any rate each of these, somehow and somewhere, set its own seal upon
the reverent heart of Holbein at about this time. Whether through their
original works or copies of them,--already familiar to Augsburg as
well as Lucerne,--the lad sat humbly at the feet of both Leonardo and
Mantegna. By the first, beside many a loftier lesson, he was confirmed
and strengthened in his native respect for accurate studies of the living
world around him. From the second he learned a still deeper scorn of
"pretty" art. Yet though he sat at their feet, it was as no servile
disciple. He would fain be taught by them; fain follow them in all
humility and frankness. But it was in order to expand his own powers,
not to surrender them; to speak his own thoughts the better, not theirs,
nor another's.
And, in any event, on such a journey Lucerne must come first. And that
he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown
by his having joined in this year 1517, the Guild of St. Luke, the
Painters' Guild of Lucerne, then but newly organised. "Master Hans
Holbein has given one Gulden," reads the old entry. Two other items of
this visit give us glimpses of its flesh-and-blood realities, perhaps of
its unrest. The first, that he also joined a local company of Archers,
the Militia of his day, seems to bring his living footfall very close.
A resonant, manly, wholesome footfall it is, too! This broad-shouldered
young fellow is as ready to draw a good stout bow among mountain-marksmen
as a lamb among its daffodils. The second item makes it still clearer
that he had other elements as well as the pastoral in his blood. On the
10th of December he got himself fined for his share in a street-scrimmage,
where he would seem to have decidedly preferred the livelier to the
"better part" of valour.
And then he would appear to have shaken the dust, or more likely the
snows, of Lucerne off his feet for the road to Italy, if not for Italy
itself. Whatever his objective, he got, at any rate, well on toward the
Pass of the St. Gothard. The scanty clues of such works as have remained
on record prove that he reached Altdorf. But there the actual trail is
altogether lost. If he spent the entire interval brush in hand, or
if--as I believe--he treated himself to a bit of a holiday beyond the
Alps, can be but a guess in the dark.
By this time the New Year of 1518, then falling in March, could not have
been far off, before or behind him. And in 1518 Holbein executed the
commission which must have been the envy of every local artist. Jacob
von Hertenstein, Burgomaster of Lucerne, had now got his fine new house
ready for decoration; and it was to Holbein that he gave the splendid
commission to decorate it to his fancy,--the interior as well as the
facade.
And a renowned triumph the painter made of it; a triumph such as,
perhaps, no other artist north of Italy could then have equalled. It is
idle now to dwell upon the religious subjects of one room, the genre
paintings in another, the battle scenes of a third, and so on through
those five famous rooms which were still in existence and fair
preservation so late as 1824, but are now for ever lost; to say nothing
of the painted Renaissance architecture and the historic legends which
looked like solid realities when the facade was studied. But "Mizraim is
become merchandise"; and all that is now left of what should have been a
treasured and priceless heirloom is but a monument to the shame of that
citizen, a banker, who could condemn such a thing to destruction as
indifferently as if it had been a cowshed, and to the shame of the
municipality which, at any cost, did not prevent it. Some hasty
sketches--due to individual enterprise and a sense of the dignity of
Holbein's fame--an original drawing for one of the facade-paintings,
and a few fragments of the interior paintings, which still show
themselves, by chance, in the banker's _stable wall_--these are all that
remain to speak of what must have been the enthusiastic labour of the
greater part of Holbein's twenty-first year!