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.
Two years earlier Erasmus had evidently thought that London was the
true stage for such a genius as Holbein's, and More had written that
he would gladly do all he could to further the painter's success if
he should decide to visit England. More himself called Holbein "a
marvellous artist" for his portrait of Erasmus, and could not but be
delighted with the beautiful little woodcut which opened Froben's
edition of his own _Utopia_.
This illustration represents More and his only son seated with AEgidius,
or Peter Gillis, in the latter's own garden at Antwerp, listening to the
tale of _Utopia_ from the ancient comrade of Amerigo Vespucci. And very
likely Holbein himself sat in this garden, in the late summer of 1526,
when he was passing through Antwerp to England. He had a letter of
introduction from Erasmus to AEgidius, as also to the host who was
expecting him in England--Sir Thomas More.
Van Mander says that long before this the Earl of Arundel, when pausing
at Basel, had been so much pleased with Holbein's works in that city
that he had urged the painter to forsake it for London. But it would
pretty surely have been the promise of More's influence which actually
induced him to try his fortune so far afield. And by the autumn of 1526
he was one of that happy company which the genial soul of More drew
around him in his new home in "Chelsea Village," where Beaufort Row now
has its north end. Here the master's love of every art, and aptitude in
affairs, filled his hospitable mansion with wit and music and joyous
strenuousness. Here he was the idol of his family, as well as the King's
friend. Henry himself must surely have shuddered could he have pictured
that face, over which thought and humour were ever chasing one another
like sun and shadow on the lawn, black above London Bridge and flung at
last from it into the Thames only a few years hence. Now it turned to
his own all life and loyalty, as he laid his arm around More's shoulders
while they wandered between the garden beds of Chelsea.
Early in 1527, probably, Holbein had finished the fine portrait of his
host, which is now in Mr. Huth's collection. The study for this oil
painting is among the Windsor drawings (Plate 20), as also one for
the large family picture now lost, if indeed it was ever completed by
Holbein; a matter of some doubt, notwithstanding Van Mander's account
of it in the possession of the art-collector Van Loo. An outline sketch
of it, or for it, he certainly made. And that precious pen-and-ink
outline,--with the name of each written above or below the figure
in More's hand, and notes as to alterations to be made in the final
composition in Holbein's hand,--is now in the Basel Museum; having come
into Amerbach's possession as the heir of Erasmus.
Illustration: PLATE 20
SIR THOMAS MORE
_Chalks. Windsor Castle_
In Mr. Huth's oil portrait More is wearing a dark-green coat trimmed
with fur, and showing the purple sleeves of his doublet beneath. His
eyes are grey-blue. He never wore a beard, made the fashion by Henry
VIII. at the same time that the head was "polled,"--a singularly ugly
combination,--until he was in the Tower and grew that beard which he
smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "It," he
said with astonishing self-possession, could be "accused of no treason."
In 1527, however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the
suspicion of it slept in More's own heart when he said to his son-in-law,
in answer to some flattering congratulation on the King's favour, "Son
Roper, if my head could win him a castle in France, my head should
fall."
But for these superb drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, we
should know nothing at all of many a portrait Holbein painted--all
among the immediate friends of More and Erasmus on this first visit
to England; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later
years. And how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of
achievement is shown by the fact that they include no studies for a
number of oil paintings that are still in existence.
Illustration: PLATE 21
JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER
_Chalks. Windsor Castle_
Of the drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a noble one of
Bishop Fisher, whose execution preceded More's by only a few weeks. A
literally venerable head it was (Plate 21), to be the shuttlecock of
papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity.
For assuredly if the life of the Bishop of Rochester hung in the
balance, as it did, in May, 1535, it was Paul III.'s mad effrontery
in making him a Cardinal while he was actually in the Tower under his
sovereign's displeasure which heated the King's anger to white-hot
brutality. "Let the Pope send him a hat," he thundered, "but I will so
provide that he shall wear it on his shoulders, for head he shall have
none to set it on!" And on the 17th of that June he made good the savage
oath. Yet the painter, after all, has been more potent than the King.
For here lives Fisher. Bishop or Cardinal this is the man, as More loved
him.
A striking and richly painted oil portrait of Erasmus's "Maecenas,"
Archbishop Warham, is in the Louvre; of which there are a number of
copies, as well as a replica, at Lambeth Palace. The latter was
exhibited at Manchester in 1857. The study for these portraits is among
the Windsor drawings. The painting in the Louvre has more vividness in
the carnations, and the impasto is thicker than at Lambeth; otherwise
the two are identical. But for myself I find a more seizing quality in
the chalk drawing than in either. There is something in its sunken
fading eyes that speaks of the majesty of office as well as its burdens.
Holbein painted a prelate of a very different sort in the oil portrait
of John Stokesley, Bishop of London, which is preserved at Windsor
Castle. And yet he dared to paint the Truth--now as always. The painting
is a masterpiece of modelling and soft transparency of light and shade.
But the truculent, lowering countenance leaves small doubt that the
sitter was a gentleman pre-eminently "gey ill to live wi'."
There is another oil painting at Windsor which has not escaped the
injuries of time, but is none the less a splendid survival of 1527. This
is the portrait of Sir Henry Guildford, Master of the Horse to Henry
VIII., and holder of many another office of trust (Plate 22). It has
sometimes been thought that the yellow tone of the complexion was due to
over-painting, but the chalk drawing shows that it was a personal
peculiarity.
Sir Henry, a warm friend to both More and Erasmus, was forty-nine when
he sat for this portrait. Under his black fur-trimmed surcoat he wears
a doublet of gold brocade. In his hand is the wand of office as
Chamberlain, and he is decorated with the collar and badge of the
Garter.
He was always a great favourite with the King from the time when the
latter came to the throne and young Guildford, then twenty, was one of
the gayest, bravest, most loyal spirits about it. Always as ready for a
real battle as a mimic one; as clever at writing plays for the King's
amusement as at acting in them; as good in a revel as at a piece of
diplomacy; it is not much wonder that his knighthood in 1512 should but
have been the prelude to a long series of promotions.
Illustration: PLATE 22
SIR HENRY GUILDFORD
_Oils. Windsor Castle_
The affection of master and man, too, was singularly sincere for a
court. Sir Henry loyally supported the King's demand for a divorce, but
he was by no means ready to support a second marriage without the papal
preliminary. Hence he was not a persona grata to Anne Boleyn. Nor
would he stoop to curry favour at the expense of an honest conviction.
When Anne warned him that he was likely to lose his office as soon as
she became Queen, he promptly replied that he would spare her all
concern about that, and went straight to the King to resign the office
of Controller. The latter showed the depth of his affection by urging
Sir Henry, twice, to reconsider his determination. But he wisely
preferred to quit his apartments under the King's roof,--without,
however, breaking the bond of mutual attachment. Five years after this
picture was painted he died; in May, 1532. Holbein also painted Lady
Guildford's portrait; an oil painting in Mr. Frewer's collection. And
Sir Henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to
decorate the interior of the Banqueting Hall specially erected for the
celebration of the French Alliance in 1527. By all of which it would
seem that in securing a new patron the painter had once more made a
friend.
Erasmus had asked AEgidius to assist Holbein's success in any way he
could. And it was probably owing to a letter from the Antwerp scholar
that a friendship of many years sprang up between the painter and
Nicholas Kratzer of Munich, then Astronomer-Royal at the Court of Henry
VIII. It began with what was once a fine portrait. But the oil painting,
now in the Louvre (Plate 23), has suffered such severe injuries as to be
but a poor ghost of what it was originally. Only the composition, and
the fidelity with which all his friend's scientific instruments are drawn
attest Holbein. He never adds a detail for merely pictorial purposes;
and never shuffles one that concerns the personality of a sitter. No
biographer with his pen sets every straw to show the winds of character
and circumstance more deliberately than does this historian with his
brush. Something of Kratzer's shrewd wit,--for he was a "character"--can
still be read in his half-destroyed picture. Years later we shall
see the intimate friend of both him and his painter writing of the
astronomer as a man "brim-full" of humour and fancy. And once, we may be
sure, it sparkled in the eyes of Kratzer's portrait as brilliantly as in
his own.
Illustration: PLATE 23
NICHOLAS KRATZER
_Oils. The Louvre_
In the Munich Gallery there is another portrait in oils which has
undergone, if possible, still more atrocious treatment than Kratzer's;
yet, like it, still keeps enough of its original charm to rivet attention
in any company. This latter is one of the most striking of the
half-dozen portraits of Sir Bryan Tuke, which all claim, with more or
less of probability, to be paintings by Holbein. And certainly in the
years when Sir Bryan was Treasurer of the King's Household it would be
natural that the painter, whose salary he regularly disbursed, should
gladly oblige him to his utmost.
But the Munich portrait also shows a far deeper bond of interests than
one of money. The undercurrent of their natures ran in a groove of more
than common sympathy; and to an analyst, such as Holbein was, the
reflections behind these inscrutable eyes were full of unusual
attraction.
Myself, I feel convinced, for more than one reason, that it is a work of
some years later. But as a consensus of authorities places it during
this visit, the picture is noticed here. It gains rather than loses by
reproduction;--since the painting now shows a strange disagreeable
colour most unlike the carnations of Holbein. But the composition is
unmistakable (Plate 24). Between the sitter and the green-curtained
background stands perhaps the ghastliest of all Holbein's skeletons,--one
hand on his scythe, the other grimly pointing at the nearly-spent sands
of the hour-glass. Below the latter is a tablet on which, in Latin, are
the words of Job: "My short life, does it not come to an end soon?" and
the signature without the date. Sir Bryan wears a fur-trimmed doublet
with gold buttons; the gold-patterned sleeves revealed by the black silk
gown, also trimmed with fur. On a massive gold chain he wears a cross of
great richness, enamelled with the pierced Hands and Feet. Fine lawn is
at throat and wrists; and in one hand he holds his gloves.
Illustration: PLATE 24
SIR BRYAN TUKE
_Oils. Munich Gallery_
* * * * *
Before the researches of Eduard His, it used to be sometimes said that
Holbein had virtually deserted his family when he left Basel in 1526. We
know now, however, that whatever were the moral wrongs which he suffered
or committed, he never forsook the duty of providing for his wife and
children in no ungenerous proportion to his means.
The records show that the fruit of his two years' industry was used to
acquire a comfortable home which remained the property of his wife. And
the inventory of its contents at Elsbeth's death, some six years after
Holbein's death, proves that this home was to the full as well furnished
and comfortable as was usual with people of similar condition.
In the summer of 1528 the painter bade farewell for ever to Sir Thomas
More's gracious Chelsea home. He took with him the pen-and-ink sketch
for a large picture of More in the midst of his family, which has been
already referred to. This was for Erasmus, who had temporarily abandoned
Basel,--now so utterly unlike the Basel of former years,--and had sought
the more sympathetic atmosphere of Freiburg. Bonifacius Amerbach, from
the same causes, was here with Erasmus for some time. So that something
like the old Froben days must have seemed still about them as the three
friends sat together and talked of all that had come and gone.
But by the latter part of August Holbein was back in that now
sadly-altered Basel whence his best friends were reft by trouble or
death. And on the 29th of August, 1528, he bought the house next to
Froben's _Buchhaus_, the deed attesting that he did so in person, in
company with Elsbeth. The price, 300 guldens or florins, was by no means
the small one it now seems, nor could the painter pay the whole sum at
once. He paid down one-third, and secured the rest by a mortgage. The
site of this house is now occupied by 22 St. Johann Vorstadt. Three
years later, March 28th, 1531, Holbein bought out a disagreeable
neighbour; and thus added to his two-storied house overlooking the
Rhine the little one-storied cottage which cost him only seventy
guldens. The factory at No. 20 now partially covers this latter site.
Fifty years ago both of the original houses were still standing; quaint,
crumbling, affecting monuments of days when Holbein's voice and
Holbein's step rang through their rooms, when Frau Elsbeth swept and
garnished them; and when four children added their links to the chain of
a marriage which Holbein was now manfully trying to make the best of.
It must have been in the year after the purchase of the larger house
that he painted the group of his wife and the two children she had then
borne him. This life-size group, done in oils on paper, is now in the
Basel Museum (Plate 25). The stoical sincerity with which they are
represented, and the hard outline produced by cutting out the work to
mount it on its wood panel, makes a somewhat repellent impression at the
first glance. And this is in no way dispersed by studying Elsbeth's
traits. But the painting itself is a tour-de-force. By sheer Quality
Holbein has invested these portraits,--a middle-aged, coarse-figured,
unamiable-looking woman, a very commonplace infant, and a bright-faced
boy,--with the prestige inseparable from an achievement of a high
order.
Illustration: PLATE 25
ELSBETH, HOLBEIN'S WIFE, WITH THEIR TWO ELDEST CHILDREN
_Oils. Basel Museum_
Clearly Elsbeth Holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth
simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut
and fashion of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in
the Louvre. Her lustreless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil
and a reddish-brown cap. Her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with
thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. The baby wears a gown of
undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of dark bluish green.
Out of such unpromising materials has the painter made a picture that
would challenge attention among any. If we knew nothing as to the
identity of this woman, sitting oblivious of the children at her knee,
wrapped in her own dark thoughts, we should certainly want to know
something of her story and of the story of the little fellow whose eyes
are breathlessly intent upon some purer, sweeter vision. There is at
Cologne, in a private collection, a deeply interesting duplicate of
this work; also on paper afterwards mounted on wood, but not cut out.
Unfortunately this latter has suffered such irremediable injuries that
it is quite impossible now to pronounce upon its claim to be either the
earlier example or a replica; but good judges have believed it to be by
Holbein. Its chief interest, however, from a biographical point of view,
may be said to lie in the sixteenth-century writing pasted on at the
top. Literally translated, this runs--
"Love towards God consists in Charity.
Who hath this love can feel no hate."[5]
It is difficult to see on what grounds Woltmann, who was inclined to
accept the picture as genuine, should hold the inscription to have
been added by someone desirous of increasing the value of the work by
representing it to be an allegorical picture of Charity. There was never
a time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value
as the portraits. And surely the second line is utterly inconsistent
with the theory. Original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a
plea which Holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a
bitterness his own errors could not have tended to cure.
When the Basel painting was cut out to be mounted, the last numeral was
lost; so that it now stands dated 152-. But all the other facts put it
beyond question that the picture could not have been done before 1529.
The baby of 1522 was now the boy of seven, and his successor would seem
to have been born during the first months of its father's visit to
England, and to be now some eighteen months old.
It may be as well to say here, once for all, as much as need be said of
Holbein's family. As already stated, his wife survived him by six years,
dying at Basel in 1549. By her first marriage she had one son, Franz
Schmidt--who seems to have been a worthy and successful man of trade.
She was the mother of four children by her marriage with Holbein;--Philip,
born 1522; Katharina, 1527; Jacob, about 1530; and Kuenegoldt, about
1532.
Some years before the painter's death he took Philip Holbein to Paris,
and there apprenticed him to the eminent goldsmith, Jerome David, with
whom he remained until a couple of years after Holbein's death. Later,
he somehow drifted to Lisbon, where he followed his trade until he
settled in the old home of his grandfather and great-grandfather,
Augsburg. In 1611 his son, Philip Holbein, junior, then "Imperial Court
Jeweller" at Augsburg, petitioned the Emperor Matthias for letters
patent to "confirm" his right to certain noble arms. The claims put
forward in this document are utterly at variance with the received
belief in Holbein's humble Augsburg origin. Yet the most expert
investigators who have carefully studied this subject agree in thinking
that this grandson based the genealogical tree on mythical foundations,
and therefore planted it remote from Augsburg itself. But be this as it
may--and it seems hard to reconcile such discrepancies within a century
of the time when both Hans Holbein the Elder and his son were well-known
citizens of Augsburg,--the application was successful. Mechel says that
this Philip, who claims descent from the renowned "painter of Basel,"
lived in Vienna during his later years; and that a descendant of his
again got their patent "confirmed" in 1756, with the right to carry the
surname of _Holbeinsberg_; also that this latter descendant was made a
Knight of the Empire in 1787, as the noble _von Holbeinsberg_. So much
for the eldest branch, that of Philip Holbein.
The younger boy, Jacob, was a goldsmith in London after Holbein's death.
The evidence seems to show that he was never here previous to that
event,--which of itself may have first occasioned his coming, though
hardly at the time, as Jacob was not more than thirteen at his father's
death. A document in existence proves that he also died in London, about
1552, and apparently unmarried; at which time his elder brother, Philip,
was still in Lisbon.
Katharina, the elder daughter, the baby of the Basel painting, seems to
have left no descendants. She married a butcher of Basel and died in
1590. And in the same year, very likely from one of the frequent
epidemics so fatal to Basel, died Kuenegoldt, Elsbeth's youngest child.
The Merian family of Frankfurt-am-Main claims an hereditary right to
the artistic gifts of its famous copper-engraver, Mathew Merian, as
descendants of Holbein through this daughter Kuenegoldt, who, when she
died, was the wife of Andreas Syff, a miller, of Basel. According to
the greatest authority on this subject, Eduard His, to whose exhaustive
researches we owe almost all that is known of Holbein's family, the
Merian claims have not, so far, been proved by actual archives; but he
is of opinion that there is considerable circumstantial evidence to
support their claim to be lineal descendants of Holbein through the
female line.
But in 1529, when the family group was painted, neither Jacob nor
Kuenegoldt were yet born; and the painter was much more concerned with
the anxieties of a living father than with the shadowy cares of an
ancestor.
And dark enough was the outlook in Basel, where the Lutheran agitation
had, as Erasmus said, "frozen the arts." Before Holbein came back from
England many churches had abjured all pictures. The tide of religious
antagonism had, as we know, driven both Erasmus and Bonifacius Amerbach
for a time to a Catholic stronghold; and had driven their old friend
Meyer to do literal battle on behalf of the Church.
Altar paintings were out of the question. And Holbein could but devote
himself to designs for the printers and for goldsmiths. Many beautiful
compositions for both crafts remain to testify of his matured powers
and constant industry. The exquisite designs for dagger-sheaths, in
particular, are rightly counted among the treasures of art. But in the
summer of 1530 came a commission for the painter's last great work in
Basel. This was the long-delayed order for the decoration of that vacant
wall in the Council Hall, which adjoined the house _zum Hasen_.
Oddly enough, this commission also came officially through a
burgomaster, Jacob Meyer. But the Meyer of 1530, Meyer "of-the-Stag"
(_zum Hirten_), had neither blood nor sentiments in common with the
Meyer under whom Holbein had done his first work in the Rathaus. Each
headed a party at deadly issue. For the past year Meyer-of-the-Hare had
vainly tried to turn back the clock or to stay the iconoclastic fury
of the hour. Religious fanaticism had wrecked him as well as every
beautiful piece of art on which it could lay its hands. And now at last
it mattered nothing any more so far as he was concerned. The dreadful
harvests that had brought virtual famine, the earthquake shocks which
had unsettled many a mental as well as material foundation, the flooding
devastations of the Birsig, the rage of Canton against Canton, the Civil
War ready to begin, Pope or Luther come by his own,--it was all one at
last to Meyer zum Hasen, who died just as his protege of earlier years
was commissioned to paint the blank wall.
But something of his spirit, something of what he himself had been
preaching to Basel in warning and threat for years, seems to have passed
on into the pictures Holbein set before the Council. The paintings,
alas! are no more. But a fragment or two and the drawings for them show
how truly grand the two works were which Holbein had probably already
intended should be his swan-song as Holbein _Basiliensis_. He chose for
his subjects Rehoboam's answer to the suffering Israelites: "My little
finger shall be thicker than my father's loins; my father hath chastised
you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions"; and Samuel
prophesying to Saul how dearly he shall learn that "Rebellion is as the
sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry."
Both subjects are treated in the Great manner. Rehoboam, leaning forward
from his throned seat with flashing eyes, and his little finger seeming
actually to quiver in the air, is wonderfully conceived. But the meeting
of Samuel and Saul (Plate 26) most splendidly demonstrates how far
Holbein towered above mere portraiture when he had the opportunity. To
picture this drawing in all the beauty of colour is to realise what we
have lost, and what his just fame has lost, with the utter destruction
of such works.
Illustration: PLATE 26
_Behold to obey is better than sacrifice_
SAMUEL DENOUNCING SAUL
_Washed Drawing. Basel Museum_
Not the greatest of the Italians could have improved upon the
distribution and balance of this composition. The blazing background,
the sense of a densely crowded host beyond what the eye can grasp, of
captives and captors--all the stupendous crackle and roar and shout
and sudden strained silence of Saul's immediate followers--is amply
matched by those two typical protagonists, just then repeating the old
drama with varying fortunes on the world's new stage. The Secular Arm
has been short in the service of God, as interpreted by his Vicar; it
has thought, in Saul's person, to win the cause, yet spare its enemies.
Vain is it for him to run with humility, to tell what he has won and
what overcome and done. He has not destroyed All--root and branch. For
reasons of personal policy, he has given quarter. And the Priest, for
God, will have none of his well-meaning excuses, of his good intentions,
his policy, his burnt offerings of half-way measures;--"Behold to obey
is better than sacrifice," begins his fierce anathema, "and to hearken
than the fat of rams."
Doubtless the Protestant party read its own meanings into these texts,
when once the pictures were painted and paid for with seventy-two good
guldens. But two very significant facts form their own commentary. One
is that the only employment he received from the Council afterward was
to redecorate the old Laellenkoenig monstrosity on the bridge!--and the
other, that as soon as Holbein got his pay for this disgraceful
commission, a pay he was now much too hard pressed to refuse, he quietly
slipped away from Basel without taking the Council into his confidence.
Judging from his after conduct to his family, he probably left the
seventy-two guldens to support his wife and children--now four little
ones--until such time as he could send them more from England; and took
his way once more, in the late autumn of 1531, with knapsack and
paint-brushes for the journey, to a city that might give him few walls
to cover, but would certainly not set him to painting the town clock.
* * * * *
Things had changed in London also, and gravely, Holbein found, since
he had quitted Sir Thomas More's home at Chelsea with the sketch for
Erasmus, in the summer of 1528. He had barely settled himself, in the
City this time, before the struggle between Henry VIII. and the English
Clergy ended in that Convocation when the latter made its formal
"Submission." And in the same month that this took place, Sir Henry
Guildford died. Then the three great Acts of Parliament, which swept
away the crying abuses of "Benefit of Clergy," resurrected the "dead"
lands (so called because perpetually _aliened in mortmain_) by restoring
them to the national circulation of the Sovereign-Will, and turned the
rich stream of Annates or "First-Fruits" of the bishoprics from the
Pope's coffers to the King's,--were passed in this year.
This legislation was followed by the solemn protest and then the death
of Archbishop Warham. So that now of that great and close quartet of
friends,--Colet, Warham, More, and Erasmus,--there were two on either
shore of the last crossing. And More could already see the dark river
ahead. His eye marked the consequences of the Acts as keenly as his aged
friend Warham had discerned them on his death-bed; and shortly after the
"Submission," More resigned his great office as Chancellor.
These seem matters too high to twist the threads of a poor painter's
life. But in reality Holbein's career was shaped, from many a year back,
by such events as rarely touch the humble individual directly. All his
friends and all his patrons in this country were carried far out of
reach by 1532; and he must sink or swim, as they in darker waters,
according to his own powers. That under such unexpected ill-fortune he
did not immediately sink was due to two things--the greatness of his
powers, and the circumstance that a trading-company of Continentals,
chiefly German, was seated in London with immense wealth and immense
influence at its disposal, and that they were men who knew how to
appreciate Holbein at his worth.
The roots of the Steelyard (_Stahlhof_), or "Stilyard," as it is often
called in early dramatists, go far back to the legendary centuries of
English history. From before the time of Alfred the Great, traders from
Germany had clustered together on the bank of the Thames, close to where
Cannon Street Station now stands. Amalgamation with the Hanseatic
League, and the necessities and gratitude of more than one king of
England--but especially of Edward IV.--had made of the Steelyard a
company such as only the East India Company of later centuries may
be compared to. With the world's new geography and new commercial
conditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its methods and
its monopoly of the seas were gradually superseded by the great seamen
of the Elizabethan era. But in Holbein's time, though already some of
the Hanseatic ships were too overgrown to pass London Bridge and cast
anchor at their own docks just above it, there was scarce a cloud upon
the colossal prosperity of the Steelyard.
Its walled and turreted enclosure, able to withstand the fiercest
assaults of Wat Tyler's men, stretched from the river northward to
Thames Street, and from Allhallows Street on the east to Dowgate Street
on the west; and it might well have been described as a German city and
port situated in the heart of the City of London. Its massive front in
Thames Street, where were its three portcullised and fortified gateways
with German inscriptions above and the Imperial Double-Eagle high over
all, was one of the sights of London. And the Steelyard Tavern was a
famous resort. When Holbein knew it well the greatest prelates and
nobles and all the Court crowd,--which stretched its gardens and great
houses from the stream of the Fleet, just west of the City wall, to
Westminster Abbey,--used to flock to this Thames Street corner of the
Steelyard to drink Rhenish wine and eat smoked reindeer-tongue and
caviar.
Within the gates stood the big Guildhall, which answered both for its
councils and its noted banquets. The high carved mantelpieces and
wainscotting served admirably to display the glittering plate and
strange souvenirs of every known land and sea. On the walls which
Holbein's works were so to enrich hung portraits of eminent members of
the Guild. The Hall was flanked by the huge stone kitchen and by a
strong-tower for the safeguarding of special valuables. In the open
space between the Hall and the west wall of the enclosure was the
garden, where trees and flowers and a greenery of vines had been planted
in exact imitation of the gardens of the Fatherland. And here sat
Holbein among the Associates, many a time, over their good cheer,--as in
the old Basel gardens of the Blume or the Stork in other years, and
heard only the German tongue or the songs of home around him.
Away down to the docks ran the lanes of warehouses; shops and booths
where every German trader or craftsman in London had his place; and
where the merchandise of the world--the greater part of it destined for
Luebeck as a centre of European distribution--might be sampled. Here were
choicest specimens of the then costly spices of Cathay, or the famous
falcons of Norway and Livonia, for which English sportsmen were willing
to pay fabulous prices.
As in other guilds, the government of this cosmopolitan beehive was that
of a despotic democracy. All the inmates of the precincts were subjected
to a rule little short of monastic in its strict discipline. The penalties
for any infringement, for drunkenness or dicing or even for an abusive
epithet, were very severe. The civic duties of the corporation, too,
were sharply defined. In case of war every member had his appointed post
in the defence of London. Every "master" had to keep the prescribed
accoutrements and arms ready for immediate use, and the repairs and
maintenance of the Bishop's Gate were at the sole cost of the Steelyard.
No chapel was erected within its enclosure, the Guild preferring to be
incorporated with the adjoining parish of Allhallows. Whether or not
there is any truth at the bottom of the ancient tradition that this
church had been originally founded by Germans, the Guild maintained its
own altar in it in Holbein's time, where Masses were said on its own
special days and festivals. So far are the facts from the common
supposition that the doctrines of Luther would find natural favour in
such a community, that the latter only gradually came into the "Church
of England" by the same slow processes which transformed the whole
parish around it. And when More, who was anything but _Utopian_ himself
in the practice of tolerating "heresy" during his chancellorship, headed
a domiciliary visit in search of Lutheran writings, he could find
nothing but orthodox German Prayer-books and the Scriptures, whose use
among laymen he always strenuously advocated; while every member of the
community was able to make honest and hearty oath at St. Paul's Cross
that no heretic or heretical doctrine would be tolerated amongst them.
Here, then, in this staunch citadel of his own faith, Holbein naturally
found a new circle of friends among whom it must have been strangely
easy to fancy himself back in the Fischmarkt of his young years, with
Froben and Erasmus and Amerbach and Meyer zum Hasen.
The curtain rings up on his work for the Steelyard,--work which covered
many years and more fine paintings than could even be enumerated
here--with a superlative exhibition of all his powers. The oil portrait
of Georg Gyze, or George Gisze, as it is often written, now in the
Berlin Gallery (Plate 27), inscribed 1532, has called forth the
enthusiastic eulogies of every competent judge. By a piece of rare good
fortune it is in perfect preservation. The black of the surcoat alone
has lost a little of its first lustre; all the rest is as though it had
left the easel but the other day.
Illustration: PLATE 27
JOeRG (OR GEORGE) GYZE
_Oils. Berlin Museum_
The young merchant is seated among his daily surroundings in the
Steelyard. He is in the act of leisurely opening a letter addressed, "To
the hand of the honourable Joerg Gyze, my brother, in London, England"
(_Dem ersamen herrn Joerg Gyzen zu Lunden in Engelant meinem broder to
henden_). The merchant's motto, "No pleasure without care," is chalked
up in Latin on the background, with his signature beneath it. Written on
a paper stuck higher up is a Latin verse in praise of the portrait; also
the date, and the sitter's age--thirty-four. On the racks and shelves
are documents, books, keys, a watch and seals, and a pair of scales. A
gold ball is hanging from above with a lovely chasing in blue enamel; a
miracle of painting in itself, to say nothing of the exquisite Venetian
glass, filled with water and carnation-pinks. This flower has its own
meaning, and is introduced in more than one of Holbein's portraits. On
the rich oriental table-cloth are writing materials also, with
account-books, seal and scissors.
Gyze himself is a fair-haired man, wearing a brilliant red silk doublet
beneath his black cloak. And the amazing thing is that amidst this
bewildering array of pictures--for every article is such in itself,
owing to the perfection of its painting--Gyze is not lost or overridden
for a moment. It is unmistakably _his_ picture; and he dominates the
accessories as much as he did in reality. The man, the whole man, is
there; and the things are there around him; that is all. But that
the eye recognises this is the demonstration of the painter's own
mastership. It is as much Holbein's peculiar secret as are the cool
shadows, the luminous glow, the astounding elaboration, all made to
express the dignity of one, and but one, theme.
As has been said, the Steelyard portraits are too many to even catalogue
here, covering many years. But Gyze's may be taken as their high-water
mark. For that matter it could not, in its own way, be surpassed by
any portrait. Holbein himself greatly surpassed it in the matter of
subtle and noble simplicity, in his two greatest extant pieces of
portraiture--the Morett of Dresden and the Duchess of Milan, now
in our National Gallery. But in technical powers, and the power of
subordinating their very virtuosity to the requirement of a true
picture, this was a superlative expression of his matured method.
In the midst of all his fresh London successes came a summons from
Basel, which must have made the painter smile a little grimly. It had
slowly dawned on the Council that Holbein--whose renown they well knew
was a feather in Basel's cap--was proposing to make a prolonged absence.
The result was a decision which the Burgomaster officially conveyed to
him. Jacob Meyer zum Hirten wrote to say that Holbein was desired to
return immediately to resume the duties of a citizen-artist, and that
the Council, anxious to assist him in the support of his family, had
resolved to allow him an annuity of thirty guldens yearly "until
something better" could be afforded. Whether he replied in evasive
terms, or whether he let the Laellenkoenig speak for him, is not on
record.
By the time Holbein received this letter, written late in the autumn of
1532, he was plunged into a year of almost incredible activity. The
whole of it would hardly seem too long for one such painting as the
life-size double portrait--his largest extant portrait-painting--that
now belongs to the National Gallery: "The Ambassadors" (Plate 28).
At the extremities of a heavy table, something like a rude dinner-waggon,
are two full-length figures which show a curious reflection of his
early defect in their want of sufficient height. At the spectator's left
stands a richly-costumed individual, whose stalwart proportions, ruddy
complexion, and boldly ardent eye denote the perfection of vigorous
health, and are in striking contrast to the physique, colouring, and
expression of his companion. The former wears a black velvet doublet,
which reveals an under-garment of gleaming rose-red satin. Over all
is a black velvet mantle lined and trimmed with white fur. On his black
cap is a silver brooch which displays a skull. He wears a gold badge
exhibiting a mailed figure spearing a dragon suspended by a heavy gold
chain. The hilt of his sword is seen at his left hand, and his right
grasps a gold-sheathed dagger. On this latter is the inscription: AET.
SVAE. 29; and from it depends a massive green-and-gold silk tassel,
incomparably painted.
Illustration: PLATE 28
"THE AMBASSADORS"
_Oils. National Gallery_
As has been noted, the complexion of the man at our right is singularly
pallid; the eyes mournfully listless; the skin of his knuckles drawn
into the wrinkles of wasting tissues. He wears a scholar's cap and gown;
the latter of some chocolate-brown pile, richly patterned, and lined
with brown fur. He holds his gloves in his right hand and leans this
arm on a closed book, on the edges of which is the lettering: AETATIS SVAE
25.
An oriental cover is spread on the table, and upon it are a number of
the scientific instruments common to astrology and to the uses of
astronomers like Kratzer, in whose portrait at the Louvre they are also
to be seen. On the lower shelf are mathematical and musical instruments
and books. The two latter are opened to display their text conspicuously.
Near the man at our left, and kept open by a T-square, is the Arithmetic
which Peter Apian, astronomer and globe-maker, published in 1527. It is
opened at a page in Division, with its German text plainly legible and
identical with the actual page, as seen in the British Museum's copy of
this edition.
The book nearest the man at our right, lying beneath the lute, has been
also identified as Luther's Psalm-book with music,--in which the German
text is by himself and the music by Johann Walther--first published in
1524. Mr. Barclay Squire has shown that the two hymns could not, however,
have faced each other in reality, as they do in the painting, without
the intervening leaves having been purposely suppressed to gain this
end. These hymns are "Come Holy Ghost" (_Kom Heiliger Geyst Herregott_)
and "Mortal, wouldst thou live blessedly?" (_Mensch wiltu leben
seliglich_). In each case the entire verse is given.
The background is a green-diapered damask curtain most significantly
drawn aside to show a silver crucifix high up in the left-hand corner,
above the man with the dagger and sword. On the beautiful mosaic
pavement is an ugly object that looks like some dried fish. But
experiments have shown that the French Sale-Catalogues in which this
work first appears in the eighteenth century--first, that is, so far as
we can trace it by any records now known--were right in calling this a
"skull in perspective"; _i.e._ a skull painted as seen distorted in a
convex mirror. Some hint of its true character can be gathered, though
not much, by looking at this object from the lower left-hand corner of
the painting, when the exaggerated length will be seen to be reduced to
something more nearly approaching the height of the usual "Death's
Head."
According to the views which are now officially accepted by the National
Gallery, the persons of this picture are two French Catholics. The one
at our left is Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, Bailly of Troyes
and Knight of the French Order of St. Michael, of which he wears the
badge without the splendid collar--as was permitted, by a special
statute, to persons in the field, on a journey, or in a privacy that
would not require the full dress of a state occasion. Jean de Dinteville
was French Ambassador at the Court of Henry VIII. in 1533; born in 1504,
he was then twenty-nine. He died in 1555.
The man in the scholar's cap and gown is George de Selve, privately
associated with de Dinteville's mission for a few weeks in the spring of
1533. He was born in 1508, nominated Bishop of Lavaur in 1526, and
confirmed in that office in 1529, in which year he was French Ambassador
at the Court of Charles V. He was twenty-five in 1533, and died in 1541.
For myself, holding convictions concerning these portraits utterly at
variance with any published opinions--and that in more than one vital
respect--I am compelled to limit my account to the bare record of its
appearance and catalogued description, until prepared to submit other
facts and conclusions to a verdict.
Two portraits in the Hague Gallery, each with a falcon hooded on the
wrist, show to how much purpose Holbein had studied these birds in the
Steelyard. The one of Robert Cheseman, done in this year, is especially
fine, with a strange, elusive suggestion of something kindred in the
nature of man and bird.
In 1533, also, the Steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration
of Anne Boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. And the result was,
as Stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the
merchants of the Stilyard, wherein was the Mount Parnassus, with the
Fountaine of Helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams
without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup
above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with Rhenish wine
till night. On the mountaine sat Apollo, and at his feet sat Calliope;
and on every side of the mountaine sate four Muses, playing on severell
sweet instruments."
But of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil
paintings--the Triumph of Riches and the Triumph of Poverty--which he
executed for the Hall of the Steelyard. In their day they were renowned
far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion,
perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the Solothurn
Madonna.
When the Guild was compelled to abandon the Steelyard, in Queen
Elizabeth's reign, the Hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that
when it regained possession, under James I., everything was in a sad
state of neglect. And when the association finally dissolved not long
after, the Hanseatic League agreed to present these paintings to Henry
Prince of Wales, known, like Charles I., to be a lover of Art.
If they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged
them with, or presented them to, the Earl of Arundel. For in 1627
Sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an
enthusiastic admirer of Holbein's work. After this, one or two vague
notices suggest that they somehow drifted to Flanders, and thence to
Paris. But there every trace of them is lost. Federigo Zucchero thought
they yielded to no work of the kind, even among Italian masters; and
copied them from pure admiration. Holbein's drawing for the Triumph of
Riches is in the Louvre Collection.
That he ever painted Anne Boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful.
The portrait among the Windsor drawings which has been labelled with her
name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. But in
1534 he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers--Thomas
Cromwell, then Master of the Jewel House.
And it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some
respects the greatest of all his portraits--one of the galaxy of supreme
works of all portraiture--the oil painting of Morett, or Morette, so
long regarded as a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art. The world knows
it well in the Dresden Gallery (Plate 29).
The figure is life-size. The pose, even the costume in its feasible
essentials, strikingly repeats the Whitehall portrait of Henry VIII., as
copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. The
background is a green curtain.
Illustration: PLATE 29
THE MORETT PORTRAIT
_Oils. Dresden Gallery_
The sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor Order of any
sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with
white, the broad fur collar of sable. In his cap is a cameo brooch. His
buttons are gold; and a gold locket hangs from a plain, heavy chain of
the same metal. His right hand carries his gloves, his left rests on the
gold sheath of the dagger that hangs from his waist. His auburn hair and
beard is streaked with grey.
No words, no reproduction, can hope to express the qualities of such
a painting. Neither can show the mastery or the spell by which the green
background, the hair, the cool transparent flesh-tones, the fur, the
satin, the gold, are all woven into a witchery as virile as it is
penetrating.
This is another work which has undergone more than one transformation in
the course of its records. As late as 1657 it was correctly ascribed to
Holbein in the Modena Collection. But the first syllable of the sitter's
name has been its only constant. In time Morett slipped into Moretta,
and then--like _Meier_ in the Madonna picture--into Morus. So far it
seems to have clung to some English tradition. But when Morus got
changed to Moro it was but natural for an Italian to think of Ludovico
Sforza, "Il Moro." Long before this Holbein had become Olbeno; and
thereafter a puzzle. When the portrait was labelled Sforza, however, who
could its obviously great painter be but Leonardo? _Et voila!_ Thus the
work passed to the Gallery and Catalogue of the Royal Collection at
Dresden. And thus it long remained, as if to attest the true level of
Holbein's genius.
But when the Gallery also acquired the drawing of the Arundel
Collection, labelled "Mr. Morett" in Hollar's engraving from it, the
painting was held to be unquestionably identified by it as Hubert
Morett, goldsmith to Henry VIII. Nor is there anything incongruous in
this belief. Such a master goldsmith was no tradesman, in our sense of
the word. He was often much more like one of our merchant princes. The
merchants of the Steelyard were frequently the royal bankers, and many
times were employed on high and delicate diplomatic missions to other
courts. Neither is there anything in the sitter's dress to forbid it to
a man of this stamp, even after the sumptuary laws of Henry VIII. were
passed; while there is much, very much, to suggest an English origin.
On the other hand, M. Larpent has now shown that the Arundel drawing was
down in a catalogue of 1746-7 as: "One Holbein, Sieur de Moret, one of
the French hostage in England"; and also that a "Chas. sieur de Morette"
is recorded among the four French hostages sent to England in 1519. It
would thus appear that the painting is a portrait of Charles de Solier,
seigneur de Morette; an eminent soldier and diplomatist of France; born
in 1480, Ambassador to England more than once, and finally, in 1534.
Besides all the portraits of Holbein's English period, many of them
scattered throughout the collections of all Europe, and many others now
lost, it must not be forgotten that he was at the same time pouring
forth miniature paintings, designs for engraving, designs for the
goldsmith, and conceptions of every sort--from a carved chimney-piece to
a woman's jewelled trinket; and all designed with the same exquisite
precision and felicity. In the British Museum as on the Continent these
drawings are an education in themselves. And besides the portrait
studies in the Windsor Collection there is a sketch for a large painting
which, if ever executed, is lost: "The Queen of Sheba visiting King
Solomon."