year, is one of Holbein’s two finest religious paintings. It is now in
the possession of Herr Zetter, but was, no doubt, originally a
commission for the Minster of Solothurn. It represents the Virgin and
Child between St. Martin of Tours and St. Ursus. The Virgin is seated
with the Child on her knee under an open arch, and her figure stands out
against the blue sky which is seen through it. Her face is very sweet
and sympathetic. The naked Child, with its little arms stretched out, is
a delightful piece of portraiture, while the two saints are magnificent
figures. This picture, deeply reverent in feeling, is conceived with
great simplicity, but is very noble in sentiment.
_The Meyer Madonna_, in Darmstadt, Holbein’s greatest masterpiece of
religious painting, and one of the finest sacred pictures in the world,
is fully described on p. 44.
BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS AND ORNAMENTAL WOODCUTS.
Holbein’s versatility as an artist is nowhere shown more convincingly
than in the illustrations he made for printed books, and the series of
woodcuts which were published from his designs during the last decade of
his life. His title-pages, initial letters, chapter headings, and
ornamental borders, for Froben and other printers, display a rich
invention, greatly in advance of most similar work of that period. In
some of them the artist’s sureness of hand and firmness of drawing have
been sadly blunted by the incapacity of the woodcutter. In others,
however, he was very happily associated with a cutter of real genius,
Hans Lützelburger, who had both the skill and intuition to carry out the
master’s intentions with marvellous and sympathetic accuracy. One of the
most celebrated of his title-pages is that known as _The Table of
Cebes_, representing, by means of countless little figures, the soul’s
journey through life.
But Holbein’s fame as a designer of woodcuts, which had spread
throughout Europe before the end of the sixteenth century, was based
[Illustration: _Hanfstängl photo._]
[_Darmstadt._
THE MEYER MADONNA.]
upon two celebrated series of designs, _The Dance of Death_ and his _Old
Testament Illustrations_, in which his gifts as an illustrator are most
clearly shown. _The Dance of Death_, with its forty little pictures, at
once became popular, and editions followed one after the other, with
additional illustrations. The subject was a very favourite one
throughout mediæval Europe, and in Holbein it reaches its highest
development. It is a series of short pictorial sermons, in which the
artist points out to the reader how slight and how uncertain is his hold
upon life, and how in the presence of death both Prince and peasant are
equal. In the satire with which Holbein has treated clerics of all
degrees we learn something of the way in which the Reformation
influenced him. Each little picture is a masterpiece of art, in which is
depicted, with grim humour, death’s unexpected approach, sparing neither
King nor Pontiff, Queen nor courtesan, knight nor beggar, old age nor
childhood. In each one the feeling for fine dramatic situation is
admirable, the whole being indicated in a few sure lines of masterly
draughtsmanship. Detailed accounts of each of the subjects will be found
in Dr. Woltmann’s “Holbein and His Time,” and in Chatto and Jackson’s
“History of Wood Engraving,” while Ruskin’s “Ariadne Florentina” should
be read for a very sympathetic and beautiful analysis of their
intellectual side, their spiritual meaning, and Holbein’s marvellous
power of design for such work.
In the same year, 1538, his illustrations to the Old Testament,
ninety-one in all, were also published by the brothers Trechsel. They
did not accompany an edition of the Bible, but were issued as a book of
pictures, with appropriate letter-press. They are less known than _The
Dance of Death_ woodcuts, and in them the artist has put a curb on his
fertile imagination, and confines himself to telling the sacred stories
with great simplicity and directness, while nothing essential to the
full understanding of the story is omitted.
In addition to these more important woodcuts, Holbein also designed
several series of ornamental alphabets, one of them a dance of death,
another with peasants at their merrymakings, and a third with children
at their games.
DESIGNS FOR GOLDSMITHS AND OTHER CRAFTSMEN.
No form of art came amiss to this versatile genius. He made hundreds of
designs for jewellers and metal-workers, many of which, happily, have
been preserved, the greater part of them being now in the Basle and
British Museums. These include designs for rings, brooches, pendants,
medallions, buttons, badges, jewelled monograms, hand-mirrors,
decorative bands to be engraved upon metal, dagger handles and sheaths,
and every kind of personal ornament, and a number of larger objects,
such as cups, bowls, clocks, and similar pieces. In these, again, his
most inventive powers of design, based upon Renaissance lines, combined
with a very skilful adaptation for decorative purposes of the human
figure, place him in the forefront of sixteenth-century designers. His
most important piece of goldsmith’s work of which we know was a gold cup
of beautiful Renaissance design, known as the _Jane Seymour Cup_, the
original drawing for which is in the British Museum, and a second one in
the University Galleries at Oxford. It was undoubtedly made as a gift
from the King to the Queen, and bears their initials, together with Jane
Seymour’s motto, “Bound to obey and serve.” Benvenuto Cellini never
accomplished anything finer in cinquecento ornament than this. In the
beauty of his design, with its more restrained taste, Holbein equalled
the famous Italian craftsman. Another beautiful design for a clock, in
which the nude figures of boys are admirably introduced, was completed
for Sir Anthony Denny, who presented it to the King on the New Year’s
Day immediately following the artist’s death.
In his younger days, when in Basle, he made many admirable designs for
stained and painted glass windows, some with sacred subjects, already
mentioned, others with armorial bearings, and in several the figures of
armed soldiers, with their picturesque costumes, are introduced with
excellent effect.
Among the many drawings by him which have been preserved there are
several examples of architecture, of which the most important is a
drawing of a large fireplace and chimney-piece, decorated with the
Royal Arms and of very elaborate Renaissance design (British Museum),
but whether it was actually carried out is uncertain. Several
architectural works have been attributed to him, such as the old
Whitehall Gateway, now demolished, the so-called “Holbein Porch” and
lodge at Wilton, the carved capitals in the More Chapel at Chelsea, and
a ceiling in Whitehall, mentioned very vaguely by Samuel Pepys. It is
almost certain that he had nothing whatever to do with these, although
his fertility in the invention of architectural details for the
backgrounds of his pictures and woodcuts was so great that possibly he
wanted only an opportunity to attempt more serious architectural work,
as was the custom of many Italian artists, who built as well as painted.
PORTRAIT PAINTING.
It was, however, as a portrait painter that Holbein’s genius reached its
highest manifestations. In portraiture he stands side by side with the
greatest. That so considerable a part of his time was given up to this
branch of art was no doubt owing to environment, although his stupendous
gifts in this direction were born in him, and were bound to come to the
front. The Reformation in Switzerland brought his paintings of
altar-pieces to an abrupt conclusion, and in England he found no demand
for sacred art, but, on the other hand, a splendid field for portrait
painting, of which he availed himself to the utmost; and he has left a
series of lifelike representations of the illustrious men and women of
Henry VIII.’s reign of more value, both historically and as absolutely
faithful representations of the people depicted, than even the similar
series painted by Van Dyck at the Court of Charles I., or by Reynolds
and Gainsborough under George II. and George III., and even wider in its
range of subjects than Velasquez accomplished in Philip’s service. The
magical brush of the artist has pictured for us, with a living realism,
many members of the royal House of Tudor, high prelates of the Church,
leading statesmen, soldiers and sailors, men of learning and of science,
leaders of fashion, country gentlemen and their wives, German and
English merchants, foreign diplomatists, and plain citizens.
One of the greatest artistic treasures in this country is the series of
drawings of heads at Windsor Castle, the preliminary studies Holbein
made before painting his portraits, and, slight as many of them are,
themselves most vivid portraits, in which, with wonderful swiftness yet
sureness of touch, he has given us not only an accurate likeness, but
also the character which lies behind the face-mask, allowing us to look
into the inmost thoughts of each sitter, and so to fathom the invisible
by the aid of his acute penetration, which is of far higher value than
mere accurate delineation of features, and is the crowning quality of
all really great portraiture.
In all his completed portraits he spared no pains over the painting of
accessories and details, and in some of them he carried this to as fine
a finish as any Dutchman or Fleming ever accomplished. What could be
finer than the various objects scattered about the office of the
Steelyard merchant, _Georg Gisze_ (Berlin), or the ornaments and
embroideries, silks, satins, and furs of the dresses in such portraits
as those of _Archbishop Wareham_ (Louvre), _Jane Seymour_ (Vienna),
_Anne of Cleves_ (Louvre), _Charles de Solier, Comte de Morette_
(Dresden), _The Ambassadors_ (National Gallery), or the _Duke of
Norfolk_ (Windsor)? Yet the fine execution of all this elaborate detail
is soon overlooked, and attention is fixed solely upon the portrait
itself, in which, without any apparent effort on the part of the artist,
the very man stands out before us exactly as he looked when in the
flesh, with no flattering or softening of harsh features, and with his
character, and the thoughts which he imagined were hidden from the
painter, laid bare for our inspection.
Holbein produces this effect of truth and this revelation of character
by what appear to be the simplest methods, which yet are in reality most
subtle and most profound. He puts but little of himself into his
portraits, and almost everything of his sitter. No great subtleties of
light and shade are brought in to aid the artistic result; and even
colour, delightful and harmonious in a high degree as Holbein’s colour
always is, is not allowed to usurp the attention from the purpose of the
work, the complete realization of both the outward and inner man. What
at the first glance seems almost an unnatural flatness in his painting
of a face displays upon examination the most delicate and accurate
modelling of form. His keenness of observation was extraordinary. He
constantly noted the slight difference in the shape of two sides of a
face, and that a man’s eyes were not always of the same size,
characteristics which even the best artists have sometimes failed to
see. His painting of hair and of beards displays a marvellous fidelity
to nature, and his drawing of hands, and the expression he puts into
them, is extraordinary. In the painting of eyes, too, and mouth he is
most expressive. The hands of _Erasmus_ in the Louvre and at Longford
Castle, of _Wareham_ and _Anne of Cleves_ in the Louvre, are instances
of this; and the eyes of _Southwell_ (Uffizi), and of _Cheseman_
(Hague), and both eyes, hands, and mouth of the _Duchess of Milan_
(National Gallery).
He is seen at his best as a portrait painter in the _Duchess of Milan_
(_see illustration, and p. 54_); _Count Morette_; Jacob Meyer and his
family in the Madonna picture at Darmstadt (_see illustration, and p.
44_); _Erasmus_ at Longford Castle (_see illustration, and p. 50_) and
in the Louvre; _Georg Gisze_ (_see illustration, and p. 51_); the
portrait of an unknown man with a long beard, formerly belonging to Sir
J. E. Millais, at Berlin; the portraits of three unknown young men, all
dated 1541, at Vienna, the Hague, and Berlin; _The Ambassadors_; _The
Two Godsalves_ at Dresden; his own wife and children at Basle; and the
_Anne of Cleves_, _Robert Cheseman_ (_see illustration, and p. 56_),
and _Richard Southwell_ already mentioned; while among his earliest
portraits those of _Bonifacius Amerbach_, and _Jacob Meyer and His Wife_
on one panel, both in Basle, should be carefully studied. A number of
others might be mentioned, but these are sufficient to establish his
right to the title of a great master.
Holbein’s method of work seems to have remained the same throughout his
life. It was his custom to make a preliminary study of the head on
paper, fixing with unerring accuracy the features of the sitter, and
making notes as to the colour or the details of the ornaments to be
introduced at the side of the drawing, and for the rest relying almost
entirely upon his memory, which must have been singularly retentive. In
this way he could accomplish much without fatiguing his patrons with a
number of sittings. Occasionally, by the use of colour and more careful
and elaborate drawing, he carried such preliminary studies much further,
until they were finished portraits in themselves. Others, again, are
only hasty outlines, but displaying the hand of a master. They were
executed in charcoal and black and red chalk, the eyes, hair, and hand
being often drawn in their proper colours. Some are strengthened in the
outlines with the brush and Indian ink, while in others the whole face
has been modelled with the brush with the greatest delicacy. In some
cases he fixed the preliminary drawing upon a panel, and then painted
the finished portrait over it.
Unlike that of Dürer, the one other really great German painter,
Holbein’s art bears no traces of mediævalism, either in form, in method,
or in thought. He was in every way a child of the Renaissance, and so
was essentially modern, as we understand the term to-day. For this
reason the forms in which he expresses himself require no explanation or
preliminary training for their full comprehension, but are immediately
intelligible to us. The great Franconian, Albert Dürer, was steeped in
the spirit of mediævalism, a dreamer of dreams, full of philosophical
theories and spiritual speculation, and his work fired with a passion
which Holbein’s lacked; whereas the great Swabian was before all things
a serene painter, lacking strong artistic passions. He loved Nature
simply and for herself, and had the keenest vision for her manifold
beauties down to the minutest details, and was filled with the delight
of life and joy of the world around him, without troubling himself
greatly about theological questions. That he was at heart on the side of
the Reformation is shown in many of his woodcut illustrations, but his
share in the controversy is marked by none of the violence which
characterized the eager partisans on either side.
Sir Frederic Leighton, speaking of these two painters in his address to
the Royal Academy students in 1893, notes the most striking differences
between them in a few admirable sentences. He says of Holbein: “As a
draughtsman he displayed a flow, a fulness of form, and an almost
classic restraint which are wanting in the work of Dürer, and are,
indeed, not found elsewhere in German art. As a colourist he had a keen
sense of the values of tone relations, a sense in which Dürer again was
lacking; not so Teutonic in every way as the Nuremberg master, he formed
a link between the Italian and German races. A less powerful personality
than Dürer, he was a far superior painter. Proud may that country be
indeed that counts two names so great in art.”
It is an almost impossible task to sum up in a short paragraph the
leading characteristics of Holbein’s art. In his great decorative
wall-paintings he rivalled many of the best Italian painters of the
Renaissance. In the depth of expression in his portraits, and his power
of rendering character and grasping the hidden thoughts of his sitter,
he is worthy of a place by Leonardo da Vinci. In his religious paintings
he reached at least once, in _The Meyer Madonna_, the level upon which
Raphael stood, and had his surroundings been different he would have
attained signal success as a painter of sacred compositions. He
attempted no great subtleties of chiaroscuro, nor sought to rival his
Italian contemporaries in the magnificence of their colour; but his
colour is always most harmonious, and both in design and style he was
great.
In his most important designs for metal-workers he is equal to
Benvenuto, that most inspired and artistic of swashbucklers, and with
more restraint in the handling of his theme, but no less invention. With
the exception of Dürer, no artist of the cinquecento produced such
admirable designs for woodcuts and book illustrations. In his
preliminary drawings for his portraits the insight, the ease of
draughtsmanship, the force united with the greatest delicacy, and the
freedom from all traces of mannerism, unite to make them--as seen at
Windsor, Basle, Berlin, and elsewhere--one of the most complete and
valuable series of documents of the history of the first half of the
sixteenth century we possess to-day. Possibly the greatest side of his
genius is to be found in his penetrative power into the very souls of
his sitters, and the revelation of true character which was the
consequence of it. This keen insight, aided by a manipulative skill of a
very rare quality, combined to make him one of the great masters of the
world. Ruskin’s judgment of him, when comparing him with Sir Joshua
Reynolds, may be fitly quoted in conclusion. He says: “The work of
Holbein is true and thorough, accomplished in the highest, as the most
literal, sense, with a calm entireness of unaffected resolution which
sacrifices nothing, forgets nothing, and fears nothing. Holbein is
complete; what he sees, he sees with his whole soul; what he paints, he
paints with his whole might.”
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
Among the many splendid portraits which Holbein painted it is difficult
to make a selection for the purpose of illustration. _The Meyer Madonna_
has been included as his finest religious painting and his most
celebrated work. Although the _Portrait of the Duchess of Milan_ and
_The Ambassadors_ are now in the National Gallery, and so are accessible
to all, they have been reproduced, because the first is in many ways the
best portrait, and certainly the most fascinating Holbein ever
accomplished, while the second is the most important work of the master
now remaining in England. The other portraits reproduced in this book
are all in their way masterpieces of portraiture, and the _Noli Me
Tangere_, at Hampton Court, is of interest as the only sacred picture by
him which is now in this country.
* * * * *
_The Meyer Madonna_ in the old schloss of Darmstadt, belonging to the
Grand Duke of Hesse, is one of the great sacred pictures of the world.
It represents the Burgomaster of Basle, Jacob Meyer, and his family
kneeling in adoration at the feet of the Virgin Mary, who stands in an
architectural niche of red marble and gray stone, with a shell-shaped
canopy over her head. Her dress is blue, but the darkening of the
varnish has given it a greenish hue, with a bright red girdle and a
large mantle, which is spread out protectingly over the donors. She is
placed upon no isolated throne, but stands among the Meyer family, as
though to protect them from evil. The Divine Child in her arms leans
back with His head against her breast, while His left hand is stretched
out over the suppliants as though in benediction. On one side Meyer
kneels, his hands clasped in prayer, gazing fervently upwards, while his
young son is occupied in supporting a little naked child who stands in
the front. On the other side kneel the women-folk, with the daughter,
Anna, nearest the spectator, her golden head-dress elaborately
embroidered with pearls. Next to her is her mother, Meyer’s second wife,
Dorothea Kannegiesser, and nearest the Virgin a third woman, who may be
either his first wife, Magdalen Bär, or Magdalen’s daughter by a
previous marriage. All are kneeling on a richly coloured Turkish carpet.
The figures are about three-quarters the size of life. The colour of the
whole is rich, subdued, and very fine.
The Dresden Gallery possesses a very fine copy of this picture, with
certain alterations, which, until the two pictures were exhibited side
by side in 1871, was considered by most critics to be the original work.
It is now acknowledged to be only a skilful copy, probably done about
one hundred years later, when Meyer’s descendants sold the picture to
an Amsterdam dealer about 1626. Certain alterations have been made by
the copyist in the hope of improving the picture. In the original the
head of the Virgin comes too near to the top of the niche, and this has
been remedied, and he has tried to improve and beautify Mary’s somewhat
thick-set figure, resulting in a lack of natural force and a weak
idealization which Holbein himself would have scorned. The happy-looking
Child of the Darmstadt picture has been copied so badly and with so
unhappy an expression that it has been thought to represent a sick
child, and it is probably owing to this that a number of fanciful
interpretations have been given of the hidden meaning of the picture.
Both in colour and in effect the copy in no way equals the original,
which is in all ways a picture of noble simplicity, splendid colour, and
striking veracity of portraiture. The Darmstadt picture was painted
about 1526. Meyer was a banker and money-changer, and during the
struggles of the Reformation remained a staunch Catholic, and no doubt
ordered this altar-piece as an outward sign of the faith that was in
him.
For reasons already mentioned a number of suggestions, more or less
improbable, have been made as to the inner meaning of the painting. It
has been suggested that it is a votive picture to commemorate the
recovery of a sick child. This idea is carried still further by others,
who say that the infant in the Madonna’s arms is the soul of a dead
child, while a third interpretation is that it
[Illustration:
_Hanfstängl photo._] [_National Gallery._
THE AMBASSADORS.]
is the soul of the woman kneeling next to the Virgin, who is supposed to
have recently died. Other explanations have been given, but they are all
sentimental refinements of modern German criticism, first voiced by
Tieck and Schlegel, which might not have occurred to them if they had
studied the original instead of the copy. Ruskin was on the side of the
sentimentalists. He says (_Cornhill Magazine_, 1860): “The received
tradition respecting the Holbein Madonna is beautiful, and I believe the
interpretation to be true. A father and mother have prayed to her for
the life of their sick child. She appears to them, her own Child in her
arms. She puts down her Christ before them, takes their child into her
arms instead; it lies down upon her bosom, and stretches its hands to
its father and mother, saying farewell.” The simplest explanation, and
the most probable, is that it is merely an ordinary picture of Virgin
and Child with the donors in adoration, and it is splendid enough in its
simplicity without the need of any refined subtleties added to it by
Teutonic sentimentalists.
* * * * *