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.
These were years of pleasant friendships, too, as well as work and
cares. Nicholas Bourbon, scholar and poet, after his sojourn in London,
writes back in 1536: "Greet in my name as heartily as you can all with
whom you know me to be connected by intercourse and friendship." And
after mentioning high dignitaries who had followed the King's example of
showing special courtesies to Bourbon, he adds: "Mr. Cornelius Heyss, my
host, the King's Goldsmith; Mr. Nicolaus Kratzer, the King's Astronomer,
a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies; and Mr. Hans,
the Royal Painter, the Apelles of our time. I wish them from my heart
all joy and happiness." This little pen-picture of Holbein's intimate
circle is a beautiful break in the mists of centuries--and shows us what
manner of men they were among whom he had made for himself an honoured
place. We could ill spare it from the few and meagre records of his
life. It is also the very earliest documentary evidence of his being in
the King's immediate service.
It was in this very year, 1536, that he received his commission to paint
Anne Boleyn's successor, Jane Seymour, then on the throne the block
had left vacant. The Vienna Gallery possesses this painting, of which
another version is at Woburn Abbey, and the chalk drawing at Windsor
(Plate 30).
Illustration: PLATE 30
QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR
_Oils. Vienna Gallery_
The Queen was noted for her milk-white fairness, and Holbein has
borrowed the pearly shadows of the lily in rendering it. The figure is a
little under life-size. Her head-dress and robes of silver brocade and
royal velvet are studded with splendid rubies and pearls to match the
jewels on her neck and breast. The hands are as full of character as of
art.
The Queen's portrait may properly be said to belong to the great wall
painting which Holbein finished in 1537 for the Royal Palace at Whitehall.
But before that date the painter's inner life had suffered one more
great wrench. At midnight of July 12th, 1536, Erasmus died in the home
that had been his own, except for the Freiburg interval, ever since John
Froben's death in 1526; a death that had probably had much to do with
Holbein's first departure from Basel. That event had uprooted the
scholar from the old house _zum Sessel_, in the Fischmarkt, and
transplanted him to the home of Froben's son, Hieronymus. The latter
house, then known as _zum Luft_, is now No. 18, Baeumleingasse. And it
was here that Erasmus passed away, his mind keeping to the last its
humour and its interests in all around him. But no one, remembering how
Fisher and More had died in the preceding year, can doubt but that the
good old man was very willing to be gone, away from changed faces and
changed ways--though Bonifacius Amerbach and young Froben were as sons
to him.
Basel, for all her differences with him, buried Erasmus with great
honours. But no tablet could so commemorate him as the noble monument
which Holbein built to him in the title-page he designed for Hieronymus
Froben's edition of Erasmus's _Works_, published in 1540. It is a
woodcut of extraordinary beauty. The full-length figure of the scholar
stands in cap and gown, with one hand resting lightly on the bust of
the god Terminus (the god of immovable boundary lines, significantly
conjoined to Erasmus's chosen motto: _Concedo nulli_) and the other
calling attention to this significant emblem of fixed convictions. Not
even the Louvre oil painting expresses the whole Erasmus quite so
completely or so nobly as this little drawing of the man whom Holbein
had loved and revered for twenty years; and to whom he owed, in the
first place, the splendid opportunities of his career in England.
And as he drew it, what ghosts of his own Past must have clustered
around the lean little figure! What echoes and visions! The Rhine, the
gardens, the clang of the press, the Fischmarkt, the friendly smiles at
Froben's and Meyer's firesides; his marriage; the stars and dews and
perfume of all his dreams in the years--those matchless years of a man's
young manhood--when he had walked with angels as well as peasants, had
seen the Way of the Cross, the Christ in the Grave, and the Risen Lord
even more clearly than the faces of flesh and blood. _Eheu fugaces!_
"God help thee, Elia, how art thou sophisticated."
* * * * *
Ah, well! Those years, and the darker, sadder years that had led far
from them, were now like his oldest friends--dead and buried. The
Holbein of 1537 was painting the King of England on the wall of his
Privy Chamber. There was a place for honest pride as well as for honest
regret in his thoughts.
This painting perished with the palace in the fire of 1698. Charles
II., however, had a small copy of it made by Leemput. And a portion of
Holbein's original cartoon (Plate 31) in chalk and Indian ink, is in
the possession of the Duke of Devonshire--the face much washed out by
cleaning, and the outline pricked for transferring to the wall. The
figures are life-size, but Walpole has already noticed how the massive
proportions and solidly-planted pose of the King heighten the illusion
of a Colossus. Behind him stands the admirably contrasted figure of
Henry VII. The whole composition consisted of four portraits; Queen
Jane Seymour opposite her husband, and the King's mother opposite to,
and on a level with, Henry VII., who stands on the elevation of the
background.
Illustration: PLATE 31
KING HENRY VIII AND HIS FATHER
(_Fragment of Cartoon used for the Whitehall Wall-Painting_)
_Duke of Devonshire's Collection_
The pose and costume of Henry VIII. in the cartoon were, as Leemput's
copy shows, faithfully carried out in the painting; but in the latter
the face was afterwards turned to the full front view familiar to us in
the many copies of the King's portrait which so long passed as works of
Holbein, on the strength of reproducing his own painting. There is no
evidence that he ever again painted Henry VIII. or that he executed
any replica of this portrait. The old copy at Windsor Castle serves,
however, to recall its details of costume; such as his brown doublet
stiff with gold brocade and scintillating with the gleams of splendid
jewels, his coat of royal red embroidered with gold thread and lined
with ermine to match the wide collar; his plumed and jewelled cap; as
also the huge gems on collar, pendant, rings, and the gold-hilted dagger
in its blue velvet sheath.
But Holbein's own portrait of Henry VIII.--as shown by the original
chalk study from life now in the Munich Gallery (Plate 32)--may in
all sobriety of speech be called a stupendous work. Looking at this
marvellous drawing and picturing to one's self those cheeks informed
with pulsing blood, those lips with breath, those eyes with blue
gleams,--it is easy to understand that Van Mander was using no hyperbole
when he said that the painting on the wall of the Privy Chamber made the
stoutest knees to tremble. It was literally, as he said, "a terrible
painting," of which none of the stupidly-heavy copies that have for the
most part travestied Holbein's work give any true conception. Many a man
could paint cloth-of-gold and gems; but only once and again in the
centuries comes a man who can thus paint, not alone the mane and stride
of the lion, but the fires that light his glance, the roar rushing to
his lips. To look long into these eyes that Holbein had the genius to
read and the firmness to draw, is to feel one's self in the grip of an
insatiable, implacable, yet leonine soul; a being who, to borrow the
matchless description of Burke's political career, is "parted asunder in
his works like some vast continent severed by a convulsion of nature;
each portion peopled by its own giant race of opinions, differing
altogether in features and language, and committed in eternal hostility
with one another." And so long as the great drama of Tudor England
enthrals the minds of men, hard by Shakespeare's supreme name must be
read the name of the painter in whose pages the actors in that drama
have been compelled themselves to declare themselves.
Illustration: PLATE 32
KING HENRY VIII
(_Life-study; probably for the Whitehall Painting_)
_Chalks. Munich Collection_
To crown the King's pride, and to the no less intense delight of the
whole nation which saw in this event the rainbow of every promise, at
Hampton Court, on the 12th of October, 1537, Queen Jane Seymour gave
birth to the son who was to reign so briefly as Edward VI. And it was
doubtless in connection with this happy circumstance that the King
commissioned Holbein's design for a truly royal piece of goldsmith's
work. This drawing, generally known as "the Jane Seymour cup," is at
Oxford, in the Bodleian Library (Plate 33).
No sketch of the artist's powers would be even barely complete without a
realising sense of their versatility. And in this design Holbein has more
than equalled the highest achievement of his great contemporary, Benvenuto
Cellini, at this time in the service of the French Court. The initials
of the King and Queen, H. and J., and the exceedingly judicious motto of
the latter--"Bound to obey and to serve"--are recurring devices. But it
is in the originality and unflawed beauty of the whole--the springing
grace of outline, the taste and cunning with which flowers of gold
naturally bloom into gems and pearls, the combination of freest, richest
fancy with every restraint of a pure taste--that the perfection of this
little masterpiece consists.
Illustration: PLATE 33
DESIGN FOR "THE JANE SEYMOUR CUP"
_Bodleian Library_
In the midst of all the public rejoicings, the Te Deums, feasts, and
bonfires, came the thunderclap of the young mother's death. Some
negligence had permitted her to take cold, and on the twelfth day after
his coveted heir was born, Henry VIII. was once again a widower. The
Court went into deepest mourning until the 3rd of February. But Thomas
Cromwell was very shortly authorised to take secret steps to ascertain
what Princess might most suitably fill the late Queen's vacant place and
strengthen the assurance of an unbroken succession.
Choice fell at first on a Roman Catholic--Christina, the sixteen-year-old
widow of Francis Sforza Duke of Milan, who had died in the autumn of
1535. The upshot of private inquiries was that Holbein was sent over to
Brussels in March, 1538, to bring back a portrait of this daughter of
Christian of Denmark and niece of Charles V. And although the painter
had but three hours in which to do it, he did make what Hutton described
as her "very perffight" image; besides which, said the envoy, the
portrait previously despatched, though painted in all her state finery,
"was but slobbered."
From this "perffight" painting, which could not have been more than one
of his portrait studies, he afterwards completed that full-length oil
painting which is worthy to rank with his great Morett portrait. By the
kindness of the Duke of Norfolk, who has lent it, this beautiful work
is now in the National Gallery (Plate 34). But unhappily for its best
appreciation, to my thinking at least, it hangs at one side and in too
close proximity to the bold colouring of "The Ambassadors"; so that its
own subtle, yet reticent superiority is well-nigh shouted down by its
lusty neighbour. It is a picture to be seen by itself; as it must stand
by itself in the usual inane gallery of women's portraits.
Hutton tells us that the painter who "slobbered" Christina's portrait
had painted her in full dress. But Holbein's eye was quick to recognise
the values of her everyday dress--the widow's costume of Italy--in
enhancing the distinction of her face and the stately slenderness of her
figure. And so he drew her as she stood, with a hint of bending
forward, her gloves being restlessly fingered in a shy yet proud
embarrassment, in the first moments when he saw her.
Illustration: PLATE 34
CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN
_Oils. National Gallery_
[_Lent by the Duke of Norfolk_]
The portrait is nearly life-size. Over a plain black satin dress she
wears a gown of the same material, lined with yellow sable. Her hair is
entirely concealed by a black hood. At her throat and wrists are plain
cambric frills. The ranging scale of tawny tones--in the floor, the
gloves, the fur, the golden glint in her brown eyes--and the one ruby,
on her hand, are the only colours, except those of her fresh young lips
and skin and the black and white of her costume. "She is not so white as
the late Queen," wrote Hutton, "but she hath a singular good countenance,
and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks
and one in her chin, the which becometh her excellently well."
It is easy to believe that they did, but her dimples did not chance for
Henry VIII. Whether she really sent him, along with her picture, the
witty refusal credited to her--that she had but one head; had she two,
one should be at His Majesty's service--or whether it was the Emperor's
doing entirely that his niece married the Duke of Lorraine instead of
the man whose first wife had been Charles V.'s aunt, there is, at all
events, a soft lurking devil in the demure little face which seems to
whisper that the answer was one which she could have made an' she would.
Van Mander heard from Holbein's circle a story which modern pedantry
is inclined to flout. This is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the
painter punished for an affront, the King hotly exclaimed:--"Understand,
my lord, that I can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but
out of seven earls I could not make one such painter as this Holbein."
An eminently ben-trovato story, at all events. And certain it is that
the painter stood sufficiently high in the royal favour to be despatched
on some special private mission for the King in the summer of 1538, of
which the secret was so well kept that nothing beyond the record of
payment for it has ever transpired.
From this date Holbein's name is regularly down in the Royal Accounts.
The amounts drawn total, it has been computed, about L360 in present
value, and would make an agreeable annual addition to his other
earnings. So that it is little wonder he was not tempted by the small
sum offered by the Basel Council in 1532. But in 1538 the Council
greatly increased the old offer, and was so anxious to have him among
her citizens that the painter seized the opportunity of his secret
mission to Upper Burgundy, whatever it was, to pay a flying visit to
Basel in the interests of his family.
* * * * *
His old companions of the Guild of St. Johann Vorstadt made this
visit--when Holbein was back among them, as was noted, "in silk and
velvet"--the occasion of a grand banquet in his honour. But the real
motive for his visit was to arrange upon what terms he could meet the
Council's wishes. The terms were far from ungenerous, as is shown by the
contract which followed him back to London.
In this the Council bound itself, in consideration of the great honour
of retaining in their city a painter "famous beyond all other painters
on account of the riches of his art," and in further consideration of
his promise to make no absence from Basel more prolonged than should be
really necessary to carry his foreign commissions to their destination
and receive his pay for them--to give him an annuity of fifty guldens,
equally whether Holbein should be ill or well, but only during his own
life. In addition to this, they granted him permission to make short
visits to specified art-centres, of which Milan was one, "once, twice,
or thrice, every year." And recognising the impossibility of his freeing
himself from his English engagements in less than two years, they also
granted him this interval before he need resume his residence at Basel;
and engaged to pay forty guldens yearly to his wife, on his behalf, for
each of these two years.
There is every probability that Holbein himself took a goodly sum to
Basel to invest for his family's permanent benefit in one way and
another. For it could only have been as a part of this gleaning for
them that he drew--as the Account Books show that he did just at this
juncture--a whole year's salary in advance from the Royal Exchequer;
seeing that the same books prove that he was liberally paid for all his
own expenses on the King's service, in addition to his regular salary.
Part of the sum he collected to take with him was doubtless used to
apprentice his son Philip, now sixteen, to the goldsmith's trade. And
that the father chose Paris for this purpose, where he left Philip on
his return journey, might well be due either to his own estimation
of Jerome David, to whom Philip was indentured, or to the fact that
Benvenuto Cellini's presence at Paris afforded some advantage; or that
his own promised return to Basel would make it preferable to have the
lad on the same side of the Channel as all his family. And that Holbein
fully intended to make the necessary and obvious sacrifice involved in
exchanging London for Basel is also proved by a contemporary account.
"His intention was," says his fellow-townsman, "had God lengthened his
life, to paint many of his pictures again at his own expense, as well as
the hall in the Rathaus. The paintings on the _Haus zum Tanz_ he
pronounced 'pretty good.'" But it was not to be.
His New Year's offering to the King on the opening of 1539 was a
portrait, probably the oil painting in the Hague Gallery, of the infant
Prince of Wales. It was a spirited picture of the royal baby with his
gold rattle in his chubby little fist, such as might have delighted a
father less doting than Henry VIII., whose return gift is recorded: "To
Hans Holbyne, paynter, a gilte cruse with a cover, weighing x oz. 1
quarter." The cruse was made by a friend of the painter; that Cornelius
Hayes, goldsmith, whom Bourbon's letter mentioned in connection with him
in 1536.
All these months the negotiations for the hand of the Duchess of Milan
had fluctuated with the varying fortunes of the King's relations with
her uncle, Charles V. But at last they had altogether collapsed with
what seemed to Henry VIII. the threatening attitude assumed by the
Emperor and the Pope. Hereupon followed that historical chapter, so full
of fatal consequences to Cromwell, and no less big with shame for the
King's own story: the pitiful chapter of Anne of Cleves.
Her brother, the Duke of Cleves, was at this time a troublesome foe to
the Emperor; while the fact that she was a Protestant was a "Roland"
for the Imperial and Papal "Oliver." So Holbein was again posted off to
bring back a counterfeit of Anne, and to carry to her a miniature of the
King. And by the 1st September he had acquitted himself of the new
mission.
There is not an iota of historical or other evidence for that "Flanders
mare" anecdote, which seems to have had a gratuitous as well as
spontaneous origin in Bishop Burnet's seventeenth-century brain, to the
effect that the King was the victim of a flattering portrait by Holbein,
and cruelly undeceived by the actual looks of his bride. In the first
place his agents wrote to him frankly that the Princess was of no great
beauty, though not uncomely, and "never from the ellebowe of the Ladye
Duchesse her Mother," who was said to be most unwilling to part with her
(as a mother might well be, for the husband in question). The King was
also told that she was quite unskilled in languages or music, and
held, with her mother, that it was "for a rebuke and an occasion of
lightenesse that great Ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of
musike." And in the next place even a superficial knowledge of Holbein
would disprove any tradition of "flattery" from his unflinching, almost
brutally truthful brush. It was hardly likely that the painter who would
not stoop to flatter Bishop Stokesley, or Henry VIII. himself, would be
swerved from his good faith by Anne of Cleves.
Illustration: PLATE 35
ANNE OF CLEVES
_Oils. The Louvre_
On the contrary, the painting, in oils on vellum and mounted on a panel,
now in the Louvre (Plate 35), is the very embodiment of contemporary
accounts of this Princess. Her fair-skinned, commonplace, yet "not
uncomely" face looks out placidly at you from the quaint Flemish
head-dress of fine gauze and jewelled cloth-of-gold. Her inert hands
(Holbein's hands belong to his truth-telling revelations), jewelled
even on the thumb, are listlessly clasped upon each other; her
crimson-velvet dress is heavily banded with gold and pearl embroidery.
No Venus certainly, and perhaps somewhat heavily handicapped by the
maternal "elbowe." But still perfectly in keeping with her descriptions
and making no denial to the French Ambassador's statement that she was
"the gentlest and kindest" of queens; or to an English eye-witness who
writes that at her coronation the people all applauded her for being "so
fayre a Ladye, of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance, and
in especial of so good qualities."
The fact is that the King's very cruelty to this poor girl--torn from
her mother's side and her Protestant home in Duerren to be the pawn of an
unscrupulous diplomacy--was based on grounds, at least, less infamous
than that of a slave-buyer. After both Cromwell and Holbein had been
well rewarded for their services, the former lost his head and the Queen
her crown on considerations that took no more account of her looks than
her feelings. The Catholic glass had risen; the King himself was not
ashamed to avow it; and the Protestant alliance was therefore an
incubus. After some two months of a queen's and wife's estate, poor
Anne of Cleves was bid to pack her belongings and take up a separate
establishment as an unmarried woman. No wonder she fainted when first
informed of such an infamy.
But there was no law in England save the _fiat_ of Henry VIII. The
marriage was pronounced "null and void," and Anne retired into private
life, on the rigid condition that she would make no attempt to ever quit
England, with an allowance of L3,000 a year, and the formal title of the
King's "sister." There was no help for her. Never again for her would
there be the austere joys of Duerren--her mother's side, her own timid
dreams of other companionship, and never the price at which she had lost
them.
At the head of the triumphant anti-Protestant, anti-Cromwell party stood
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, whose portrait, in the Royal
Collection at Windsor, Holbein painted about this time (Plate 36). The
lean face and the figure clothed in red stand out strikingly from the
plain green background, although the painting has suffered not a little
injury. The robe is lined and trimmed with ermine, and over it is the
collar and badge of the Order of the Garter. In his right hand he holds
the gold baton of his office as Earl Marshal, and in his left the White
Staff of the Lord Chamberlain.
Illustration: PLATE 36
THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK
_Oils. Windsor Castle_
According to Roper, Norfolk, then Earl of Surrey, was a great friend of
Sir Thomas More. But it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than
the records of the two men. The latter a pattern of personal purity and
lofty ideals; the former as venal as the King's Parliaments, and as
unscrupulous in pursuit of his passions as the King himself.
Norfolk's star of influence had already waxed and waned with the evil
destinies of one niece, before it arose anew with the fortunes of
another only to plunge sharply after them into the gulf of ruin. For the
present he and Gardiner, restored to favour with him, were all-powerful.
Their calculations seemed to prosper, too, beyond their most ambitious
dreams, when, instead of ruling through a rival to Anne who should be
the King's mistress, they were to rule through a legal successor. For
the King was nothing if not technically correct; and from the moment
when the fatal royal glance flamed on Catherine Howard when Gardiner was
entertaining him, nothing would do but she should become his wife. And
thus once more the wild wheel of Fortune was to make Norfolk uncle to a
Queen of England.
Anne was divorced on the 12th of July, 1540, and on the 28th of the
same month, on the very day when Thomas Cromwell was beheaded, the King
married Anne Boleyn's cousin, Catherine Howard. On the 8th of August she
was proclaimed Queen, and on the 15th of that month she was publicly
prayed for as such in all the churches of the realm. Well might she be!
Dry your outraged tears, Anne of Cleves, and give thanks to God that you
are well out of it!
There is a miniature in the Windsor Collection now believed to be
Holbein's portrait of Catherine Howard. Until recently it was held to be
the portrait of Catherine Parr. But there is a larger portrait of the
former among the Windsor drawings, a study evidently made for an oil
painting (Plate 37). By this it seems that she had auburn hair, hazel
eyes, a fair complexion, and a piquant smile. There is a painting which
accords with this drawing in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection, but it
is said to be by a French artist.
Illustration: PLATE 37
CATHERINE HOWARD
_Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle_
In the autumn of this year, 1540, the two years of absence expired which
had been granted to Holbein by his contract with the Basel Council. But
he had now formed ties which were too powerful to yield to Basel's.
Those plans of painting again the walls by which coming generations
would judge him, the resolve to try again if he and Elsbeth might not
manage to live in peace under one roof where the children, who were
strangers to him, should come to know and be known by him in something
more than name, were all relinquished. They must certainly have
been relinquished on some definite mutual understanding, and at a
"compensation" agreed upon between him and Elsbeth and his step-son,
Franz Schmidt; because it must have been Holbein himself who enabled
Franz, acting on his mother's behalf, to take over as he did the entire
legacy--a snug little competency in itself--to which Holbein fell heir
in this autumn by the bequest of his uncle, Sigmund Holbein, citizen of
Berne. Philip having been launched by his father in the goldsmith's
craft, there only remained the second son and two daughters at home.
Thus so far as mere money went, Holbein might now think himself
discharged from the support of his family, and free to divert his future
earnings from them. And, as has been said, the Will and Inventory proved
at Elsbeth's death, six years after her husband's, that he had made no
bad provision for them in the matter of material comforts, however
remiss his conduct in its moral aspects.
The Royal Accounts break off in 1541, but the Subsidy Roll for the City
of London has a very precious item for Holbein's biography in the
October of this year. This announces that "Hanns Holbene" is among the
"straungers" then residing in "the Parisshe of Saint Andrew Undershafte,"
and that he is assessed as such.
Not only the Windsor chalk drawings, but the paintings at Vienna,
Berlin, and other Continental galleries, show the pressure, as well as
the high level of quality, at which he was now working. These portraits
are among almost his very best, while the one shortly to be mentioned is
quite among them.
By the summer of 1542 the tragedy of Catherine Howard was over. That
Royal Progress, like more than one of its forerunners, had become the
royal shame. This time it was a shame so black and so wide that within
two years, after madness and death had purged the complicity of many,
there still remained so many more involved in the sins and follies of
Norfolk's niece that the ordinary prisons were unable to contain all
that were arraigned; a shame so bitter that when the proofs of it were
first laid before Henry VIII. the Privy Council quaked to see him shed
tears. It was, they said with awe, "a strange thing in his courage!"
The guilty woman had her own tears to shed in expiation; but in the
dawn of February 12th, 1542, she walked to the block as full of wilful,
cheerful audacity, and as careful of her toilet, as she had ever gone to
meet her royal lover. And so the auburn head of the King's fifth wife
rolled from the axe that had severed her guilty cousin's.
On July 12th, 1543, the "next" year as it then began, the King married
Catherine Parr. She had been twice widowed and was about to marry Sir
Thomas Seymour when the King interfered, and she became his wife
instead; though one can well credit the story that she tremblingly
told him, "It were better to be his mistress." She was a good woman, a
generous stepmother, and a good wife. But there is plenty of probability
for the assertion that her own death had been debated with the King when
her wit delayed it, and his death set her free to marry at last the man
from whom the King had snatched her.
It was formerly believed, as has been said, that Holbein had painted
her miniature--the one at Windsor, now declared to be the portrait
of Catherine Howard. About this time he must have painted the great
portrait of which mention has been made. This is the oil portrait of
Dr. Chamber, the King's physician, now in the Vienna Gallery (Plate 38).
The sitter was, as the inscription shows, eighty-eight years old; and
the strong, stern face is full of that "inward" look which comes to
the faces of men whose meat and drink has been a lifetime of heavy
responsibilities. He had been associated with the Charter of the College
of Physicians in 1518, and was also instrumental in that of the Guild of
"Barbers and Surgeons," in 1541. And it was probably through him and Dr.
Butts, another physician to the King whom Holbein had painted and who
was likewise a Master of the new Guild, that he undertook to paint a
large work for their hall--Henry VIII. granting their Charter to the
Master-Surgeons kneeling before him.
Illustration: PLATE 38
DR. CHAMBER
_Oils. Vienna Gallery_
This work Holbein did not live to finish; and it is to-day exceedingly
doubtful as to how much of the smoke-blackened painting is by him. The
very drawing has a woodenness foreign to his compositions, and much of
the painting is by an evidently inferior hand. But good judges hold some
of the heads to be undoubtedly his work.
However this may be, with the autumn of 1543 Holbein's life came to a
sudden close. Van Mander, wrong as to the date by eleven years which
have fathered a host of spurious _Holbeins_ on the Histories of Art, is
apparently right as to the cause of death--"the Plague." By the great
discovery of Hans Holbein's Will, found by Mr. Black in 1861 among the
archives of St. Paul's Cathedral, it is proved that the painter made his
Will on October 7th, and must have died between this and November 29th,
1543, when administration was granted to one of his executors (the other
would seem to have perished, meanwhile, from the same epidemic). This
surviving executor was an old friend of the artist, whose portrait,
in the Windsor Gallery, he had painted eleven years before--Hans of
Antwerp, a master-goldsmith of the Steelyard.
The Will bears about it evident signs of having been made in great haste
and mental disturbance. But it accomplished all that Holbein probably
had at heart; that is, the ensuring that whatsoever moneys could be
collected from his accounts, or by the sale of "all my goodes and also
my horse," should first be applied to clear a couple of specified debts,
and the rest be managed for the sole benefit of "my two chylder which
be at nurse." From the very fact that nothing as to the identity or
whereabouts of these babies is mentioned, it is clear that Holbein
relied on the verbal instructions which he had given to his trusted
friends and to their complete understanding of all the circumstances as
well as of his wishes. He was only concerned, apparently, that such
small means as could thus be saved for them should not be permitted to
pass to his legal heirs.
No other heirs are mentioned; no other legacy is made. From the Will
alone one who did not know otherwise would suppose that he had no
other family or relatives in existence. The Plague left no man in its
neighbourhood much leisure for explanations. Stowe records that the one
of that autumn was such "a great death" that the Law Courts had to be
transferred to St. Albans. But two things seem to speak in this curt
document. First, that by the transference of his uncle Sigmund's little
fortune to Franz Schmidt (as trustee for Elsbeth and the children of her
marriage with Holbein), which the archives prove took place three years
earlier, and by his other arrangements for his family at Basel and for
Philip at Paris, Holbein held himself free of any further responsibility
for their support, and, indeed, determined that they should not obtain
possession of the residue in London.
Secondly, that if the mother of his two illegitimate children had lived
with him in London as his wife, she must have just died--perhaps in
childbed, perhaps of the Plague. She is not in any way referred to.
And there is something in the very signs of confusion and distress
throughout the wording of the Will which seems to exhale a far-away
anguish--sudden parting, sad apprehensions, keenest anxiety for "my two
chylder which be at nurse." There comes before the eye a picture of
the five grave men--Holbein, his two executors, the one a goldsmith,
the other an armourer, and his two witnesses, a "merchaunte" and a
"paynter"--hurrying along the plague-infected streets to get this
document legalised as some protection for two motherless babies, in the
event of their father's death. No man knew whose turn would come within
the hour.
And by November 29th Holbein's had come, and one executor's also,
apparently. The Latin record of administration on this date is that it
has been consigned to John Anwarpe (Johann or Hans of Antwerp), and
accepted by him in accordance with "the last will of John, alias Hans
Holbein, recently deceased in the parish of Saint Andrew Undershaft."
It would seem probable, then, that the painter was buried in this church
rather than in the closely adjoining church of Saint Catharine-Cree to
which tradition assigned his body. But the horrors of such an epidemic
as that in which the painter was swept suddenly away make it easy to
understand how even such a man as he had now become could die unnoticed
and be buried in an unrecorded grave. When the Earl of Arundel, a few
years later, sought to learn where he might set up a monument to one he
so greatly admired, there was only this vague and uncorroborated rumour
that the painter was buried in Saint Catharine-Cree. And so no monument
was built to mark the spot where Holbein's "measure of sliding sand" had
been spilled at last.
But, as they ran, those sands had measured more than "_a great
portrait-painter_." They had measured Greatness; greatness which is not
to be delimited by the wanton outrages of man or the accidents of time.
Both have had their share in the judgments of generations that have lost
all his greatest and nearly all his imaginative creations. And what
the Spoiler has spared, the self-styled Restorer has too often ruined.
Self-love, on the other hand, and family pride have been engaged to
preserve those portraits by which it is now the fashion to mulct him of
his far larger dues.
Of his mysticism, of the symbolism in which his "Journal Intime" is
written in his own firm cipher, this little book is not the place to
speak; though for those who have once come to know the true Holbein
these have a spell, a stern, inexhaustible enchantment all their own.
But study the few fortunate survivals of his imaginative works, study
even more the wrecks and skeletons of his loftier conceptions, and ask
yourself if it could be by only a quick eye and a clever hand (and he
had both, assuredly) that Holbein caught up the dying ember of the Van
Eycks' torch and fanned it by his originality, his fancy, his winged
realism, until its light lit up the dim ways of Man with a clairvoyance
far beyond theirs. This eye, this mind, flung its gleaming penetration
into every covert of the soul and deep, deep, deep into the most
shrouded, the most shuddering secrets of Mortality.
Was it by virtue of a mere portrait-painter's powers that the son of
the Augsburg Bohemian came to lay his finger upon the very core and
composition of perhaps the haughtiest, the subtlest, the most dread
despot since the Caesars? Henry VIII. and Fisher; the Lais Corinthiaca,
the Duchess of Milan, his brooding wife; dancing children, and dancing
Death; Christ on the Cross, Christ in the Grave, Christ Arisen; lambs in
the fields, woods and hills, gaping peasants, wild battle;--put them
side by side, the poor ghosts of them left to us, and compute the range
of art--"the majestic range" that framed them all.
Let us be just. Let us forget for a moment the chirp of the family
housekeeper over her gods. Let us gather up the broken fragments that
are more than the meal, and humbly own the Miracle that created them.
It is idle to argue with the intelligence that can see "a want of
imagination" in Holbein. But we can find proof and to spare that it
is not so; that his so-called "limitations"--apart from method, which
is a matter of Epoch--are due to a creed we may or may not agree with,
but surely must respect. The creed that Beauty is the framework, the
ornament, rather than the substance of things; the pleasure, not the
purpose of "this mortal"; and that the sweetest flower that blows is but
an exquisite moment of transfigured clay.
He smells the mould above the rose; yet how he draws the rose! The
brazen arrogance of pomp, the pearl on a woman's neck, the shimmer of a
breaking bubble, the wrinkles in a baby's foot, the beauty of life, the
pathos of life, the irony and the lust of life,--he has painted them
all, as he saw them all, in the phantasmagoric Procession of Being
betwixt garret and throne.
He has painted each, too, with that genius for seizing the essential
quality which _is_ the thing, that never forsook him from Augsburg to
Saint Andrew's Undershaft; that singular, vivid, original genius which
can well afford to let his grave be forgotten, whose works build for
him, as Hans Holbein--
_One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die._
FOOTNOTES.
1: The name used thus, without further identification, is to be taken
throughout these pages to mean Hans Holbein the _Younger_.
2: Variously written Meyer, Meier, Mejer, Meiger, or Megger. Baer is also
written _Ber_, or _Berin_.
3: I am deeply indebted to the personal kindness and trouble of Sir
Martin Gosselin, K.C.M.G., British Minister at the Court of Portugal,
for greatly facilitating my own study of this interesting picture.
4: I am indebted to the personal kindness of the discoverer's son, Herr
Direktor Zetter-Collin of the Solothurn Museum, for these details. But
the whole story, as well as Herr Zetter-Collin's contributions to the
history of the work, should be read in his own absorbingly interesting
monograph:--"_Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn. (...) Ihre
Geschichte, etc._" 1902.
5:
_"Die Liebe zu Gott Heist charite.
Wer Liebe hat der Tragt kein Hass."_
A CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL
EXISTING WORKS OF
HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
ARRANGED, SO FAR AS CAN BE KNOWN,
IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE
** signifies--_Superlative qualities._
* signifies--_Of some particular importance._
? signifies--_Authorities differ._ Held by some (and by the writer)
to have been, in its original condition, the work of
Holbein's own hand.
I.
EARLIEST INDIVIDUAL WORKS (BEFORE GOING TO BASEL)
? St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Barbara. Oils. (Wings of the St.
Sebastian altar-piece.) Munich Gallery.
Virgin and Child. Oils. Basel Museum. (Earliest signed work known.
Dated 1514.)
II.
FIRST BASEL PERIOD
(1515, 1516, 1519-1526)
Illustrations to Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_.
Eighty-two pen-and-ink sketches on the margins.
Original copy, Basel Museum.
Portrait of an unknown young man.
Oils. Grand-Ducal Museum, Darmstadt.
Jacob Meyer _zum Hasen_ and his second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser.
[Plates 4 and 5.] Oils. Basel Museum.
Bonifacius Amerbach. [Plate 6.] Oils. Basel Museum.
Portrait of himself. [Frontispiece.] Coloured Chalks. Basel Museum.
* Studies from Nature. (A bat outspread and a lamb.)
Drawings in water-colour and silver-point. Basel Museum.
Designs for armorial windows. (More especially those
with _Landsknechte_ and one with three peasants gossiping.)
Washed Drawings. Basel Museum and Print Cabinet, Berlin.
_Landsknechte_ in a hand-to-hand fight. [Plate 7.]
Washed Drawing. Basel Museum. Others in various collections.
Design for the wings of an organ-case.
Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.
Head of St. John the Evangelist.
Oils. Basel Museum.
The Last Supper. (On wood; ruined fragment.)
Oils. Basel Museum.
The Nativity [Plate 8.] and The Adoration. Oils.
Freiburg Cathedral. (Wings of a lost altar-piece.)
Holy Family. Washed Drawing. Basel Museum.
(Also other drawings of the Virgin and Child.)
The Passion. Eight-panelled altar-piece. [Plate 9.]
Oils. Basel Museum. (Utterly ruined by over-painting.)
* The Passion. A series of ten designs for glass-painting.
Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.
(A set of seven reversed impressions in the British Museum.)
The Man of Sorrows and the Mater Dolorosa.
Oils, in tones of brown. Basel Museum.
Christ borne to the ground by the weight of the cross.
A Washed Drawing and a * Woodcut (unique impression).
Basel Museum.
* Christ in the grave. [Plate 10.]
Oils. Basel Museum.
? The risen Christ and Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre. [Plate 11.]
Oils. Hampton Court Gallery. (Very much injured.)
St. George. Oils. Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
St. Ursula. Oils. Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
? Portrait of a young girl. [Plate 13.]
Drawing in chalk and silver-point. Jabach Collection. The Louvre.
** The Solothurn Madonna. [Plate 12.]
Oils. Solothurn Museum. ("Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn,"
of which the remarkable history is given in the text; together
with the evident relationship of Plate 13 and the hypothesis of
the present writer in that connection.)
** Portrait of Erasmus. [Plate 14.]
Oils. The Louvre.
A Citizen's Wife, and others, in the dress of the time.
Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.
The Table of Cebes. Border for title-page.
Woodcut. Royal Print Cabinet, Berlin.
St. Peter and St. Paul; on the title-page of Adam Petri's
reprint of Luther's translation of the New Testament.
Alphabet of "The Dance of Death." Woodcuts.
Proof-impressions in the Basel Museum, the British Museum,
and the Dresden Royal Collection.
Bible Pictures: illustrating Old Testament. Woodcuts.
** "Images of Death." [Two shown at Plates 14 and 15.]
Proof-impressions, some sets incomplete, in the Basel Museum,
British Museum and the National Print Collections of Paris,
Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Karlsruhe, and the Bodleian Library.
(This is the immortal series of Woodcuts, often called
"The Dance of Death," done for the Trechsel Brothers of Lyons,
but not published there until many years later.)
Dorothea Offenburg as the Goddess of Love. [Plate 16.]
Oils. Basel Museum.
The above as Lais Corinthiaca.
Oils. Basel Museum.
** The Meyer Madonna. [Plates 18 and 19.]
Oils. Grand-Ducal Collection, Darmstadt (superbly restored);
and ?Dresden Gallery. (Notwithstanding the many and eminent
authorities who hold this to be a copy, there still remain
a sufficiency of no less eminent authorities to warrant the
present writer in her unshaken opinion that, at any rate in
its first estate and in the main, this Dresden version--revered
for more than one century as such by the highest authorities--was
the creation of Holbein's own hand.)
III.
FIRST LONDON PERIOD
(1526-1528)
Portrait of Sir Thomas More.
Oils. Mr. Huth's Collection.
Chalk Drawing at Windsor. [Plate 20.]
(Also a drawing of Sir John More, father of the above.)
** John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. [Plate 21.]
Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle. (Another in the British Museum.)
Archbishop Warham.
Oils. The Louvre, and Lambeth Palace.
? John Stokesley, Bishop of London.
Oils. Windsor Castle.
Sir Henry Guildford. [Plate 22.]
Oils. Windsor Castle.
Lady Guildford.
Oils. Mr. Frewen's Collection.
Sir Thomas Godsalve and his son John.
Oils. Dresden Gallery.
Chalk Drawing of Sir John Godsalve.
Windsor Castle.
Nicholas Kratzer, Astronomer Royal to King Henry VIII. [Plate 23.]
Oils. The Louvre.
Sir Henry Wyat. Oils. The Louvre.
Sir Bryan Tuke, Treasurer of the Household to King Henry VIII.
Oils. Munich Gallery. [Plate 24.]
Also at Grosvenor House. (As stated in the text, the writer holds
that the portraits of Sir Bryan Tuke should properly be classed
with those of a later period. But they are given here in accordance
with opinions which obtain at present.)
IV.
LAST BASEL PERIOD
(1528-1531)
** Portrait group of Holbein's wife, Elsbeth, and his two eldest children.
[Plate 25.] Oils, on paper.
Basel Museum. (Outline hard from having been cut out and mounted.)
King Rehoboam replying to his people, and
** Samuel denouncing Saul. [Plate 26.]
Two Washed Drawings. Basel Museum. (These are the designs for "the
back wall" of the Basel Council Chamber.)
"Portrait of an English Lady" (unknown).
Chalk Drawing. Basel Museum.
** Portrait of an unknown young man in a broad-brimmed hat.
Chalk Drawing. Basel Museum.
(This is one of the most beautiful of Holbein's portrait studies. There
is a soft, yet virile, witchery about it which haunts the memory.)
Round Portrait of Erasmus. (Bust, 3/4 view.)
Oils. Basel Museum.
Designs for dagger-sheaths and other goldsmith's work.
Washed Drawings. Basel Museum, British Museum, etc.
(More especially the "Dance of Death"; a chef-d'oeuvre.)
A ship making sail.
Washed Drawing. Staedel Institut. Frankfurt.
V.
LAST PERIOD; LONDON
(1531-43)
** Portrait of Joerg Gyze. [Plate 27.]
Oils. Berlin Gallery.
Portrait of an unknown man.
Oils. Schoenborn Gallery, Vienna.
Johann or Hans of Antwerp.
Oils. Windsor Castle. (Holbein's friend and executor.)
Derich Tybis of Duisburg.
Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
Derich Born.
Oils. Munich Gallery, and Windsor Castle.
Derich Berck.
Oils. Petworth.
Unknown Man.
Oils. Prado Gallery, Madrid.
The Triumph of Riches.
Drawing. The Louvre.
(Copies of this and the pendant design, The Triumph of Poverty,
in the British Museum and in the Collection of Lady Eastlake.)
The Queen of Sheba before Solomon.
Washed Drawing, heightened with gold and colours. Windsor Castle.
Robert Cheseman, with falcon.
Oils. Hague Gallery.
* "The Ambassadors." [Plate 28.]
Oils. National Gallery.
(A double portrait, life size. Formerly supposed to be Sir Thomas
Wyatt and a scholar; now officially held to be Jean de Dinteville,
Bailli de Troyes, and George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. As stated
in the text, the present writer differs from any identification of
either figure yet published, but is not prepared to put forward her
own views for the present.)
Nicholas Bourbon de Vandoeuvre, scholar and poet.
Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
(An intimate friend of Holbein, Kratzer, and their circle. Recently
identified as the man in the scholar's gown, in "The Ambassadors,"
and so given by Mr. Lionel Cust, in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_, in his article upon Holbein.)
**The Morett Portrait. [Plate 29.]
Oils. Dresden Gallery.
(Long believed to be a triumph of Leonardo da Vinci's art, and the
portrait of Ludovico Sforza, "Il Moro." At one time held to be Henry
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Afterwards "established" and catalogued as
Hubert Morett, goldsmith to King Henry VIII. Following M. Larpent's
suggestion, however, it is now supposed to be the portrait of Charles
Solier, Sieur de Morette. But as to this the last word may yet remain
to be said. The drawing which the majority of authorities hold to be
the study for this painting now hangs near it.)
Thomas Cromwell.
Oils. Tittenhanger.
** Miniature portrait of Henry Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk.
Windsor Castle.
Title-page used in Coverdale's Bible. Woodcut.
Q. Jane Seymour. [Plate 30.]
Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
** Portrait of Erasmus, full length, in scholar's robes, with his hand
on the head of the god Terminus. Woodcut.
Frontispiece to Hieronymus Froben's edition of Erasmus's
Works, published in 1540.
(Commonly known as "Erasmus in a surround," or niche.)
Fragment of the Cartoon [Plate 31] used for the four royal portraits
in the wall-painting at Whitehall. The fragment shows only the figures
of King Henry VIII. and his father. Hardwick Hall.
(Remigius van Leemput's copy of the wall-painting shows that the
position of the King's head was changed, in the completed work, to the
full-face view so familiar in the oil-painting at Windsor Castle. The
latter is one of the many copies of Holbein's original portrait of
Henry VIII. which long passed muster as genuine _Holbeins_.)
** Portrait study of the face of King Henry VIII. [Plate 32.]
Chalk Drawing. Royal Print Cabinet, Munich.
(Probably the Life-study for the Whitehall painting. If nothing
else remained, this mask alone would incontestably rank Holbein
among the Masters of all time. To the writer's thinking, at any
rate, it stands among the very few works of art which it would be
difficult to match, and impossible to surpass in its own colossal
qualities.)
** Design for "the Jane Seymour Cup." [Plate 33.]
Bodleian Library.
** Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan. [Plate 34.]
Oils. National Gallery; lent from Arundel Castle.
Edward VI., when infant Prince of Wales.
Oils. Hanover Gallery, and Lord Yarborough's Collection.
Anne of Cleves. [Plate 35.]
Oils on Vellum. The Louvre.
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. [Plate 36.]
Oils. Windsor Castle, and Arundel Castle.
Catherine Howard. [Plate 37.]
Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
(The Miniature at Windsor Castle, formerly said to be Holbein's
portrait of Catherine Parr, is now said to be Catherine Howard. If
so, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile it with the drawing,
which latter seems much more in keeping with the descriptions of
her traits.)
Title-page used in Cranmer's Bible. Woodcut.
(This is the title-page from which Cromwell's Arms are erased in
the second edition.)
Sir Nicholas Carew.
Oils. Dalkeith Palace. Chalk Drawing. Basel Museum.
Simon George of Cornwall.
Oils. Staedel Institut, Frankfurt.
Miniature portrait of Charles Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk.
Windsor Castle.
Lady; unknown.
Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
Also a fine portrait of an unknown man.
Oils. Same Gallery.
Sir Richard Southwell.
Oils. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
John Reskymeer.
Oils. Hampton Court Gallery.
Nicholas Poyntz.
Oils. De la Rosiere Collection, Paris. Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
Sir John Russell.
Oils. Woburn Abbey. Chalk Drawing. Windsor Castle.
Three portraits; men unknown.
Oils. Berlin Gallery.
Designs for jewelry, ornamental panels, clocks, chimney-piece,
etc., etc. Washed Drawings. British Museum, Basel Museum, etc.
Many fine portraits of which no versions in oils are known.
Chalk Drawings. Windsor Castle.
Among these one of Edward VI. as boy Prince of Wales, the Duchess of
Suffolk, Sir Thomas Wyatt, etc., etc.
Dr. John Chamber, or Chambers.
Oils. Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
Also many other oil-portraits, more or less genuine, in various
Collections.
REFERENCES
The Literature of Holbein's Life, much more of his Works, is far too
extensive to admit of a Bibliography in a volume of this sort. But the
following List will be found to contain (or themselves refer the reader
to) all that is of essential importance to even the most complete study
of this Master.
Carel van Mander, _Het Schilder-Boeck_, etc., 1604.
The above translated into French, and admirably edited by
M. Henri Hyman. 2 tom., 1884.
Alfred Woltmann, _Holbein und seine Zeit. Zweite umgearbeitete
Auflage_, 1874. 2 Bde.
There is an English translation of the First Edition of 1871, by
F. E. Bunnett; but unfortunately its views on many vital points are
reversed by Woltmann himself in his latest edition.
R. N. Wornum, _Some Account of the Life and Works of Hans Holbein_, 1867.
Corrected in many respects by the author in a monograph on
"The Meier Madonna," 1891.
Paul Mantz, _Hans Holbein_. Paris, 1879.
H. Knackfuss, _Holbein_. Leipzig, 1899.
English translation of the above by Mr. Campbell Dodgson.
Eduard His, _Die Basler Archive ueber Hans Holbein den
Jungern_. In Zahn's _Jahrbuecher fuer Kunstwissenschaft_,
1870.
Francis Douce, _The Dance of Death_, 1833.
J. R. Smith, _Holbein's Dance of Death_, 1849.
(Especially fine reproductions.)
H. N. Humphreys, _Holbein's Dance of Death_, 1868.
G. Th. Fechner, _Ueber die Deutungsfrage der Holbein'schen Madonna._
_Die aelteste historische Quelle ueber die Holbein'sche Madonna_.
Both in _Archiv fuer die zeichnenden Kuenste_, 1866, I., 4.
These give all the known facts of the history of the Meyer Madonnas
of Darmstadt and Dresden.
S. Larpent, _Sur le portrait de Morett_. Christiania, 1881.
Mary F. S. Hervey, _Holbein's "Ambassadors,"_ 1900.
This volume also embodies, and gives the references to, the original
identifications of Professor Sidney Colvin, and the suggested
identifications of Mr. C. L. Eastlake; as well as to the contribution
concerning the hymn-book by Mr. Barclay Squire.
W. F. Dickes, _Holbein's "Ambassadors" Unriddled_, 1903.
F. A. Zetter-Collin, _Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn.
Ihre Geschichte aus Originalquellen_, etc.
In _Festschrift des Kunst-Vereins der Stadt Solothurn_, 1902.
Artur Seeman, _Der Brunnen des Lebens, von H. Holbein_.
In _Zeitschrift fuer bildende Kunst_. Mai, 1903.
With a superb illustration in colour.
INDEX
"Adoration," painting, 71
"Ambassadors, The," painting, 145-9, 193
Amerbach, Basilius, 66
Bonifacius, 25, 46-50, 99, 125
Johann, 48, 61
Anne, of Cleves, Queen, 171-4
Antwerp, Johann or Hans of, 183
Arundel, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of, 184
Thomas Howard, Earl of, 151
William Fitzalan, Earl of, 115
Augsburg, 10, 11, 16
Baer, Hans, 24, 25
Magdalena, first wife of Meyer zum Hasen, 31
Barber-Surgeons, Guild of, 180
Basel, description of, 58-64
decoration of the Rathhaus by Holbein, 83-5, 132, 135, 170
decoration of the Laellenkoenig by Holbein, 135
offers of an annuity to Holbein, 145, 168, 169, 176, 177
Basel, banquet to Holbein, 168
Beatus Rhenanus, 68
Berne, 12
Bible, translations before the Reformation, 23, 24
Boleyn, Anne, Queen, 150, 151
Bourbon, Nicholas, 156, 157, 193
Bourges, 99
Burgkmair, Hans, 11
Butts, Sir William, 180
Cellini, Benvenuto, 169-70
Chamber, John, 180
Cheseman, Robert, 150
"Christ in the Grave," painting, 78-80
Christ in Holbein's Art, 77-83
Christina, Duchess of Milan, 144, 164-7
Colet, John, Dean of St. Paul's, 22, 137
Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex, 152
"Dance of Death," 100-103
Darmstadt, "Meyer-Madonna" at, 108-13
David, Gerard, 53
David, Jerome, 169
Diesbach, Nicholas von, 89, 90
Dinteville, Jean de, 149
Dresden, "Meyer-Madonna" at, 108-13
Duerer, Albrecht, 22
Edward VI., King, 163, 170
Elizabeth of York, Queen, 161
Erasmus, Desiderius, 17-21, 125, 137, 158
Portraits of, 98, 99, 159
Eyck, H. and J. van, 15, 185
Faesch, Remigius, 111
Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, 118
"Fountain of Life," painting, 53, 54
Froben, Hieronymus, 158
Froben, Johann, 15, 34, 35, 63, 64, 68, 98
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, 175
Gerster, Hans, 89, 90
Glass-painting, designs for, 54, 55
"Goddess of Love," painting, 104
Gold-work, designs for, 163
Graf, Urs, 65, 66
Guildford, Sir Henry, 119-21
Lady, 121
Gyze, Georg, 142-43
Hayes, Cornelius, 170
Henry VII., King, portrait, 161
Henry VIII., King, portrait, 160-63, 195
New Year present to Holbein, 170
Henry, Prince of Wales, 151
Hertenstein, Jacob von, 43
Holbein, Ambrose, 10, 12, 13, 17
Bruno, 12
Elsbeth, 58, 94-7, 104, 105, 107, 126-9, 177-82
Hans, the Elder, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 91
the Younger, birth (1497), 16
at Basel (1515-17), 24
at Lucerne (1517-18), 41, 42
a citizen of Basel (1519-26), 58-113
marriage, 58
wife and children, 104-7, 124, 129-31, 169, 170, 182
first visit to England (1526-8), 115-25
last years in Basel (1528-31), 125-36
purchase of Basel House (1528), 125, 126
final return to London (1531), 136
mention of, by Nicholas Bourbon, 157
official income, 167
will and death, 180-83
place of interment, 184
illegitimate children, 183
as a designer and engraver, 35-7
greatness of, 184-7
religious ideals and sympathies, 21-4, 77-83
Jacob, 128-30
Katharina, 128-31
Kuenegoldt, wife of Andreas Syff, 129-31
Michael, 11
Philip, son of Hans the Younger, 86, 94, 129, 169, 170
Philip, grandson of Hans the Younger, 130
Sigmund, 12, 177
Howard, Catherine, Queen, 175
Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, 175
Hutten, Ulrich von, 71
Hyss, Cornelius, 157
"Jane Seymour Cup," 163
Kratzer, Nicholas, 121, 122, 157
Lais Corinthiaca, painting, 105, 106
Landsknechte, drawings, 57, 58
"Last Supper," paintings, 50-52
Leemput, Remi von, 160
Leonardo da Vinci, 40, 50
Lisbon, painting, the "Fountain of Life" at, 53, 54
Lucerne, 41, 42
Luetzelburger, Hans, 36, 98
Lystrius, Gerard, 68
Mantegna, Andrea, 40, 41, 50
"Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre," painting, 80-83
Merian, family of, at Frankfurt, 131
Meyer, Anna, 110, 111
Dorothea, nee Kannegiesser, 31-4, 109
Jacob zum Hasen, 31-4, 75, 89, 107
Jacob zum Hirten, 132, 133
Magdalena, nee Baer, 31
"Meyer-Madonna" (Darmstadt and Dresden), 108-13
Milan, 40
Monasticism and Art, 5-8
More, Sir Thomas, 112, 114-17, 137
Morett, Hubert, or Morette, Charles de Solier, portrait, 144, 154, 194
"Nativity," paintings, 71-4
Oberriedt, Hans, 72, 75
Oporinus, Joannes, 67, 68
Paracelsus, 67
Parr, Catherine, 176, 179
Passion, eight-panelled altar-piece, 75-77
drawings, 77, 78
Plague (in 1543), 182
Saint Andrew Undershaft, London, 178, 183, 184
Saint Catharine Cree, London, 184
Schmidt, Franz, 177, 182
Schoolmaster's Sign-board, paintings, 25, 26
Selve, Georges de, Bishop of Lavaur, 149
Seymour, Jane, Queen, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164
"Sheba, Queen of, visiting Solomon," drawing, 155
Solier, Charles de, Seigneur de Morette, 154
Solothurn Madonna, painting and its history, 86-97
Steelyard, the, London, 138-42
Stokesley, John, Bishop of London, 119
Sultz, Dorothea von, nee Offenburg, 104-6
Title-pages, woodcuts, 65, 98, 115, 159
"Triumph of Riches and of Poverty," drawings, 150
Tuke, Sir Bryan, 122, 123
Ulm, 11
Utopia, woodcut title-page, 115
"Virgin and Child," drawings, 55
paintings by Holbein, 86-97, 108-13
Warham, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 118, 119, 137
Wilhelm Meister, School of, 8
Windsor, portrait, drawings at, 117
Zetter, "Madonna" at Solothurn, 86-97
LITTLE BOOKS ON ART
_Demy 16mo. 2s. 6d. net._
=SUBJECTS=
MINIATURES. Alice Corkran
BOOKPLATES. Edward Almack
GREEK ART. H. B. Walters
ROMAN ART. H. B. Walters
THE ARTS OF JAPAN. Mrs. C. M. Salwey
JEWELLERY. C. Davenport
CHRIST IN ART. Mrs. H. Jenner
OUR LADY IN ART. Mrs. H. Jenner
CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. H. Jenner
ILLUMINATED MSS. J. W. Bradley
ENAMELS. Mrs. Nelson Dawson
FURNITURE. Egan Mew
=ARTISTS=
ROMNEY. George Paston
DUeRER. L. Jessie Allen
REYNOLDS. J. Sime
WATTS. Miss R. E. D. Sketchley
HOPPNER. H. P. K. Skipton
TURNER. Frances Tyrrell-Gill
HOGARTH. Egan Mew
BURNE-JONES. Fortunee De Lisle
LEIGHTON. Alice Corkran
REMBRANDT. Mrs. E. A. Sharp
VELASQUEZ. Wilfrid Wilberforce and A. R. Gilbert
VANDYCK. M. G. Smallwood
DAVID COX. Arthur Tomson
HOLBEIN. Beatrice Fortescue
COROT. Ethel Birnstingl and Mrs. A. Pollard
MILLET. Netta Peacock
CLAUDE. E. Dillon
GREUZE AND BOUCHER. Eliza F. Pollard
RAPHAEL. A. R. Dryhurst
PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
PRINTERS
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Contemporary spellings have generally been retained even when
inconsistent. A small number of obvious typographical errors have been
corrected and some names regularised; missing punctuation has been
silently added. Advertising material has been moved to the end.
The following additional changes have been made:
to away with him to _do_ away with him
and in Pope Leo's hands for a and _would remain_ in Pope Leo's
year yet for a year yet
Die zetter'schen Madonna Die _Zetter'sche_ Madonna
vow Solothurn _von_ Solothurn
that I imagine it to have that I imagine to have
Mecaenas Maecenas
at Basel (1515-77) at Basel (1515-_17_)