Holbein Part 4

The Child is drawn and painted superbly. The carnations are exquisite; the gravity of infancy is not exaggerated, yet fittingly enforces the gesture of benediction. The left hand is turned outward in a movement so peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation and nature. The little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled sole a bit of inimitable painting. But perhaps most wonderful of all is the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the Child is the centre of interest as well as of the picture. How it is so, is Holbein's own secret.

To right and left of the Virgin stand two fine types of spiritual and temporal authority. Behind and at her right, almost hidden by the amplitude of her mantle, kneels a poor wretch who is introduced here by some necessity of the commission itself, but is skilfully prevented from obtruding his needs on the serene beauty of the scene. Dropping gold into his alms-bowl with a hand effectively contrasted with his brown thumb, stands "the sinner's saint"--the good Bishop of Tours; while some other condition of the work has embroidered St. Martin's red mitre with the figure of St. Nicholas. There is one other striking circ.u.mstance about St. Martin; and that is that, although he is in the Virgin's presence, he wears the violet chasuble of an Intercessor. The chasuble is lined with red, and it and the rich vestments, on which scenes of the Pa.s.sion are displayed, are the patient verisimilitude of ancient vestments. In St. Martin's gloved left hand is his crozier and the right glove, which he has drawn off to bestow his alms.

Opposite to him stands the patron-saint of Solothurn,--St. Ursus, a hero of the Theban legend,--dressed from head to foot in a suit of magnificently painted armour. His left hand grasps his sword-hilt; his right supports the great red flag with its white cross. Nor is that flag of the year 1522 the least interesting detail of this work. With the crimson reflections of the flag streaking the cold gleams of his glittering armour, his stern dark face and the white plumes tossing to his shoulder, St. Ursus is a figure that may well leave historical accuracy to pedants. Below his foot are the initials H.H., and the date, 1522; as if cut into the stone.

This work was commissioned by Hans Gerster, for many years Town Archivist of Basel, in which capacity he had to convey important state papers to other councils with which that of Basel had negotiations. From this it came about that from the year when Basel entered the Swiss Confederation, in 1501, Gerster was almost as much at home in the "City of Amba.s.sadors" as in his own, and the Dean or _Probst_ of the Solothurn Cathedral--the "Cathedral of St. Ursus and St. Victor"--became not only his spiritual director, but one of his most intimate friends. Many circ.u.mstances which cannot be given here make it pretty evident that in 1522 Gerster, probably under the advice of the Probst, the Coadjutor Nicholas von Diesbach, made this picture an _expiatory_ offering for some secret sin of grave proportions. There are hints that point to treachery to the Basel troops, in the Imperial interests, sympathy with which finally cost him, as well as his friend Meyer zum Hasen, his official position. Gerster himself was not a native of Basel, although his wife, Barbara Guldenknopf, was.

Be this as it may, it is apparently in direct connection with this confessed sin that "the sinner's saint," St. Martin of Tours, is chosen as Intercessor for Gerster, wearing the prescribed chasuble for this office. And it seems likely that the addition to his mitre of the figure of St. Nicholas was Gerster's wish, in order to specially a.s.sociate the name-saint of his friend--Nicholas von Diesbach--with this intercession.

It is a.s.sumed by those who have patiently unearthed these details of circ.u.mstantial evidence, that the beggar is introduced to mark the ident.i.ty of the boundlessly charitable Bishop of Tours. But I venture to suggest still another reason: this is, that in the uplifted, pleading face of the mendicant, whose expression of appeal and humility is a striking bit of realism in these ideal surroundings, we may have the actual portrait of the donor, Hans Gerster himself. That this should be so would be in strict accord with the methods of the period. There is a striking parallel which will occur to all who are familiar with the St.

Elizabeth in the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich. Here the undoubted portrait of Hans Holbein the elder is seen as the beggar in the background.

It is, as has been said, a marvellous story by which this glorious painting,--in which the introduction of the patron-saint of Solothurn proves that it was created for one of her own altars,--was completely lost to her, and to the very histories of Art, and then returned to the city for which it was originally destined; all by a chain of seemingly unrelated accidents. But only the skeleton of that story can be given here.[4]

In all probability this Madonna was executed for the altar of the ancient Lady Chapel of the Solothurn Cathedral. A hundred and twenty-six years after it was painted, this chapel was pulled down, to be replaced by a totally different style of architecture; and as the picture was then smoke-stained and "old-fashioned" it would in all likelihood drop into some lumber-room. At all events, it must have become the property of the Cathedral choirmaster,--one Hartmann,--after another five-and-thirty years. For at this time he built, and soon after endowed, the little village church of Allerheiligen, on the outskirts of the industrial town of Grenchen, which lies at the southern foot of the Jura.

_Facilis descensus!_ Another turn of the centuries' wheel and the gift of this chapel's founder was once again thought unworthy of the altar to which it had been presented. When Herr Zetter of Solothurn first saw it in the queer little Allerheiligen chapel, it hung high up on the choir wall; blackened, worm-eaten, without a frame, suspended by a string pa.s.sed through two holes which had been bored through the painted panel itself. Yet his acute eye was greatly interested by it. And when, during an official visit in 1864, he heard that the chapel was undergoing a drastic renovation, he was concerned for the fate of the discoloured old painting. At first it could not be discovered at all. Finally he found it, face downward, spotted all over with whitewash, under the rough boards that served for the workmen's platform. A few hours later and it, too, would have been irrevocably gone; carted away with the "old rubbish"!

He examined it, made out the signature, knew that this might mean either any one of a number of painters who used it, or a clumsy copy or forgery, yet had the courage of his conviction that it was Holbein's genuine work. He bought it of the responsible authority, who was glad to be rid of four despised paintings, for the cost of all the new decorations. He had expert opinion, which utterly discouraged his belief; but stuck to it, took the risks of having it three long years (so rotten was its whole condition) under repairs which might at any moment collapse with it, yet leave their tremendous expenses behind to be settled just the same; and finally found himself the possessor of a perfectly restored chef-d'oeuvre of Holbein's brush, which, from the first, Herr Zetter devoted to the Museum (now a fine new one) of Solothurn.

To-day this work, which some forty years ago no one dreamed had ever existed, smiles in all the beauty of its first painting; a monument to the insight and generous enthusiasm of the gentleman whose name is rightly connected with its own in its official t.i.tle--"The Zetter-Madonna of Solothurn." And it smiles with Holbein's own undebased handiwork throughout. _Pace_ Woltmann's blunder,--its network of fine cracks, even over the Virgin's face, attests that it has suffered no over-painting.

The work has been mounted on a solid back, the greatest fissures and the holes filled up to match their surroundings, the stains and defacements of neglect cleared away, and the triumph is complete. It might well be the "swan song" of a veteran artist at such work. Whatever the mistakes of Eigener's career, the restoration of the Solothurn Madonna was a flawless achievement for himself and his a.s.sociates.

This work, too, is the most precious of all that have come down to us of Holbein's imaginative compositions, from the fact that his first-born, Philip, who was born about 1522, was the model for the Child, and that a portrait of Elsbeth, his wife, served as a study for the Virgin. This portrait is an unnamed and unsigned drawing in silver-point and Indian ink, heightened with touches of red chalk, now in the Louvre Collection.

(Plate 13.)

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 13 UNNAMED PORTRAIT-STUDY: NOT CATALOGUED AS HOLBEIN'S _Silver-point and Indian-ink. Louvre Collection_ _Believed by the writer to be Holbein's drawing of his wife before her first marriage, and the model for the Solothurn Madonna_

That this is a portrait of Holbein's wife any careful comparison with her portrait at Basel must establish. Feature for feature, allowing for the changes of sufficient years, the two faces are one and the same. The very line of the shoulder, setting of the head, and even the outline of the fashion in which the low dress is cut, is alike in both. And equally unmistakable is the relation between this Louvre drawing and the Madonna of Solothurn.

Yet I am unable to accept Woltmann's theory that the drawing was made in 1522 "for" the Virgin. He a.s.sumes that the lettering which borders the bodice in this drawing--ALS. IN. ERN. ALS. IN....--and the braids in which the hair is worn are simply some "fancy" dress. But surely if ever hair bore the stamp of unstudied, even ugly custom, it does so here.

Then, too, Woltmann himself, as are all who adopt this explanation, is unable to reconcile the oldest age which can be a.s.signed to this sitter with the youngest that can be a.s.sumed for the Basel painting of 1529 upon a hypothesis of only seven years' interval. Temperament and trouble can do much in seven years; but not so much as this. I say _temperament_ advisedly; because all the evidence of Holbein's life substantiates the a.s.sertion of Van Mander, who had it from Holbein's own circle of contemporaries,--that the painter's life was made wretched by her violent temper. We shall find him far from blameless in later years; but though it may not excuse him, his unhappy home must largely explain his alienation.

Yet that it can explain such an alteration as that between the Louvre drawing and the Basel portrait I do not believe. Nor could I persuade myself either that any married woman of the sixteenth century wore her hair in that most exclusive and invariable of Teuton symbols--"maiden"

plaits;--or that any husband ever thought it necessary to advertise upon a picture of his wife that he held her "in all honour."

Myself, I must believe, then, that this portrait was made years before 1522; probably in the young painter's first months in Basel, in 1515; and thus some fourteen years before the Basel group of 1529 was painted.

It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved.

But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could easily have run a natural course between 1515 and their marriage, somewhere about 1520.

As for the inscription,--it is a detail that Woltmann thinks represents a repet.i.tion of the one phrase, and that I imagine to have suggested what for some reason Holbein did not wish to proclaim:--"In all honour.

[In all love.]" But nothing can shake my conviction that in it we hear the faint far-off echoes from some belfry in Holbein's own city of is.

The realities of that chime are buried,--whether well or ill,--four hundred years deep in the seas that roll over that submerged world of his youth and pa.s.sion. But living emotion, we may be sure, went to the writing and the treasuring of this pledge to Elsbeth or himself; a pledge redeemed when she became his wife.

Thus for the altar-piece of 1522 there would be this portrait of Elsbeth in her girlhood ready to his hand. But even so, see how he has idealised it, made a new creature of it, all compact of exquisite ideals! He has eliminated the subtle sensuousness which has its own allure in the drawing. Every trait is refined, purified, vivified, raised to another plane of character. Genius has put the inferior elements into its retort, and trans.m.u.ted them to some heavenly metal far enough from Holbein's home-life.

Throughout all these years, as has been said, he was busy for the printers also. In 1522 he drew the n.o.ble t.i.tle-page for Petri's edition of Luther's New Testament, with the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul at either side, of which mention has been made. And in Thomas Wolff's edition of 1523 there is a series of his designs. His alphabets, borders, ill.u.s.trations of all sorts, continued to enrich the Basel press from this date, and were often borrowed by printers in other cities. In 1523 there came to Basel that masterly wood-cutter who has been already referred to,--Hans Lutzelburger. And from this time on, therefore, Holbein's designs may be seen in their true beauty.

He had painted, besides portraits of Froben and others, at least three portraits of Erasmus by 1524. For in June of this year the latter writes to his friend Pirkheimer, at Nurnberg, to say that he has sent two of these portraits by the "most accomplished painter" to England; while the artist himself, he adds, has conveyed still a third to France.

The smaller of the two sent to England, two-thirds the size of life, is probably the one now in the Louvre (Plate 14). It is a masterpiece of penetration and technique. Erasmus is here seen in the most unaffected simplicity of dress and pose; in profile against a dark-green tapestry patterned with light green, and red and white flowers. The usual scholar's cap covers his grey hair. The blue-grey eyes are glancing down at his writing. Studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the Louvre drawings. The very Self of the man--the lean, strong, _thinking_ countenance,--the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,--is alive here by some necromancy of art.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 14 ERASMUS _Oils. The Louvre_

The portrait now in the Basel Museum, in oils on paper, afterwards fastened to the panel, is in all likelihood that third portrait which Erasmus told Pirkheimer the painter himself had taken to France. So that Holbein must have painted it for, and carried it to, Bonifacius Amerbach, who was then, in 1524, finishing a renewed course of study at Avignon. Probably it was during this visit to France, too, that he made the spirited sketches of monuments at Bourges. In that case it would seem that he struck across by way of Dijon to the Cathedral City, in connection with some matter not now to be discovered, and from there took the great highway to Avignon by way of Lyons; carrying with him the gift of his sketches from the monuments of Duke Jehan of Berri and his wife. These were treasured in Amerbach's collection.

Whatever the reason that sent him abroad on this journey,--whether unhappiness at home or the troubled state of public affairs during the Peasants' War of 1524 and 1525,--or whether he simply had business in France which delayed him there for a year or two--at all events, all records fail as to his wanderings or work in this long interval. And many circ.u.mstances go to show that it was at this time that he entered upon the immortal work which was published at Lyons, by the Trechsel Brothers, many years later;--those "Images of Death" which have borrowed the old name in popular parlance, and are generally called Holbein's "Dance" of Death.

Just why the Trechsels did not issue the publication until 1538 it is impossible to say. As one of the largest Catholic publishing-houses of France, they would be governed by circ.u.mstances entirely outside of Holbein's history or control. But more than one circ.u.mstance presses the conclusion that the designs were made between 1523 and 1526. And there is a certain amount of evidence for the belief that they may have been first struck off in Germany, possibly by some one of the multifarious connections of the Trechsels, as early as 1527. But this is a large subject, not to be dealt with as an aside.

All the world knows these wonderful designs; their beauty of line, power of expression, and sparkling fancy. Among them all there are only two where Death is a figure of violence; and but one,--the knight, transfixed by one fell, malignant stroke from behind--where Death exhibits positive ferocity. In both of these,--the Count, beaten down by his own great coat-of-arms, is the other,--it is easy to read a reflection of the actualities of the Peasants' War then raging.

For the rest, the grim skeleton wears no unkind smile; though that he _is_ Death makes it look a ghastly-enough pleasantry. But toward the poor and the aged he is better than merry; he is kind. His fleshless hand is raised in benediction over the aged woman; and the bent patriarch leans on his arm, listening to Death's attendant playing the sweet old melodies of Long-Ago as he stands on the verge of the great Silence.

But where a selection must be made, there are two drawings with their own special claim to consideration. These are the Ploughman and the Priest (Plates 14 and 15). The former has been cited by Ruskin as an example of a perfect design for wood-engraving; but even higher than its art, to my thinking, is its feeling. To the labourer of this sort,--poor, patient, toilworn,--Holbein's heart is very gentle. And so is Death--who m.u.f.fles up his harsh features and speeds the heavy plough with a step like that of Hope. And at the end of the long, last uphill furrow, see how the setting sun shines on "G.o.d's Acre!"

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 15 THE PLOUGHMAN _"Images of Death" Woodcut series_

THE PRIEST _"Images of Death" Woodcut series_

The second selection, the Priest, is its own proof, if any were needed, of how sharply Holbein distinguished cloth from cloth. In it, nearly a decade after he had pointed Erasmus's satire on the unworthy prelate or the unclean friar, may plainly be read that reverence for the true priest which Holbein shared with all his best friends. In the quaint, quiet street this solemn procession is too familiar a sight to draw any spectator from the hearth where the fire of the Living is blazing so cheerily. The good Father, very lovingly drawn, casts his kind glance around as he pa.s.ses on his Office with the veiled Pyx carried reverently. Before him goes Death, his Server, hastening the last mercy with eager steps. Under his arm is the tiny gla.s.s that has measured the whole of a mortality; the sands have lost their moving charm, and all their dazzle makes but a little shadow now. In his hand is the bell that sounds Take heed, Take heed, to the careless; and Pardon, Peace, to dying ears that strain to hear it. But largest of all his symbols is the lamp in his right hand; his own lamp, the lamp that dissipates Earth's last shadows--the Light of Death.

Holbein must have had his own solemn memories of the Last Office as he drew this picture of the good parish priest. For it was just about this time that the Viatic.u.m must have been administered to his father. In 1526 the then Burgomaster of Basel wrote to the monastery at Issenheim, where Hans Holbein the Elder had left his painting implements behind him years before, in which he recalls to the Fathers how vainly and how often "our citizen," Hans the Younger, had applied to get these costly materials restored to their owner during his life; or to himself as his father's heir afterwards. This application was no more successful than Holbein's own, apparently; and the painter was told to seek his father's gold and pigments among the peasants who had pillaged the monastery.

By 1526 Holbein was back in Basel; but two works of this year would go to show that he was little less separated from his wife in Basel than when away. The first of these, about one-third life-size, is a portrait of a woman with a child beside her who grasps an arrow to suggest the G.o.ddess of Love attended by a wingless Cupid (Plate 16). The little red-haired child does not do much to realise the ideal; but the woman, though not an ideal Venus, might nevertheless well pose as a man's G.o.ddess. A "fair" woman in more senses than her colouring. Her dark-red velvet dress slashed with white; wide sleeves of dusky gold-coloured silk; her close-fitting black head-dress embroidered with gold; the soft seduction of her look; the welcoming gesture of that pretty palm flung outward as if to embrace; these are all in keeping.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 16 DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS THE G.o.dDESS OF LOVE _Oils. Basel Museum_

This was a lady whose past career might have warned a lover that whatever she might prove as a G.o.ddess, she could play but a fallen angel's part. The annals of Basel knew her only too well. This was Dorothea, the daughter of a knight of good old lineage,--Hans von Offenburg. But the knight died while she was quite young, and her mother, better famed for looks than conduct, married the girl to a debauched young aristocrat,--Joachim von Sultz. His own record is hardly less shameless than Dorothea's soon became,--though the latter is chiefly in archives of the "unspeakable" sort. At the time when this picture was painted she must have been about two-and-twenty.

Unhappy Holbein, indeed! The temper of Xantippe herself, if she be but the decent mother of one's children, might work less havoc with a life than this embroidered cestus. But "the German Apelles" was no Greek voluptuary, ambitious in heathen vices, such as that other Apelles whose painting of Venus was said to be his masterpiece. And when Holbein inscribed his second portrait of Dorothea with the words LAS CORINTHIACA, the midsummer madness must have been already a matter of scorn and wonder to himself. His whole life and the works of his life are the negation of the groves of Corinth.

The paint was not long dry on the G.o.ddess of Love--at any rate, her dress was not worn out--before he had seen her in her true colours; "the daughter of the horse-leech, crying Give, Give."

And so he painted her in 1526 (Plate 17); to scourge himself, surely, since she was too notoriously infamous to be affected by it. As if in stern scorn of every beauty, every allure, he set himself to record them in detail: something in the spirit with which Macaulay set himself, "by the blessing of G.o.d," to do "full justice" to the poems of Montgomery.

Las is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than Venus. No emotion has hurried the painter's hand or confused his eye this time. In vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of att.i.tude, such a wistful smile on her lips. He knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker's coast. No faltering; no turning back. He can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. He is a painter now; not a lover.

And lest there should be one doubt as to his purpose, he flings a heap of gold where "Cupid's" little hand would now seem desecrated, and inscribes beneath it the name that fits her beauty and his contempt.

The plague was raging in Basel all through that spring and summer, but I doubt if Holbein shuddered at its contact as at the loveliness he painted. The brand he placed upon it is proof of that--Las Corinthiaca, the infamous mistress of the Greek Apelles.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 17 DOROTHEA OFFENBURG AS LAS CORINTHIACA _Oils. Basel Museum_

But in 1526 men sat among the ashes of far goodlier palaces and larger interests than personal ones. The party in power was not friendlier to Art than to the Church of Rome. In January the Painters' Guild had presented a pet.i.tion to the Council,--humbly praying that its members, "who had wives and children depending on their work," might be allowed to pursue it in Basel! And so hard was Holbein himself hit by the fanatical excitement of the time that the Council's account-books show the paltry wage he was glad to earn for painting a few shields on some official building "in the borough of Waldenburg."

Small wonder that an artist such as Holbein should feel his heart grow sick within him, and should turn his thoughts with increasing determination to some fresh field. Even without the bitterness that now must have edged the tongue of a wronged wife, or the bitterer taste of Dead Sea fruit in his own mouth,--he must have been driven to try his luck elsewhere. And of all the invitations urged upon him, the chances which Erasmus's introductions could give him in England would probably offer the greatest promise.

But before he set out with these letters, in the late summer of 1526, he executed yet one more great commission for his old friend, Jacob Meyer zum Hasen, now leader of the Catholic party in opposition. This was the work known now to all the civilised world as "The Meyer Madonna." For centuries the beautiful picture which bears this name in the Dresden Gallery has been cited by every expert authority and critic as this work. But since the mysterious appearance of the Darmstadt painting, which suddenly turned up in a Paris art collector's possession, from no one knows where in 1822, the tide of belief has slowly receded from the Dresden painting. Until now there are only a few judges who do not hold--especially since the public comparison of the two works at Dresden in 1871--that the Dresden picture is "a copy by an inferior hand."

Unquestionably the painting now in the Schloss at Darmstadt is the earlier version. And unquestionably, too, the changes introduced in the Dresden copy,--the elevated architecture, slenderer figures, and less happy Child,--are so great as to lend weight to the arguments of those who still claim that no copyist would ever have made them. But, as has been said, the contention that the Dresden work is a replica by Holbein of the older Darmstadt altar-piece, is now maintained by only a very small minority of judges. The painting of the Darmstadt work is admitted by all to be more uniformly admirable, more completely carried out; the details more finished (except in the case of the Virgin), and the colours richer and more harmonious. Yet both works should be studied to appreciate fully their claims and differences (Plates 18 and 19).