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

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.

The picture popularly known as The Ambassadors, formerly in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle, was purchased for the nation in 1890. Until that year the left-hand figure was always supposed to represent Sir Thomas Wyatt, poet and diplomatist, and his companion some unknown friend and fellow Ambassador, who, Dr. Woltmann suggested, was John Leland. When the picture was first exhibited in the National Gallery many suggestions were made as to their real identity, the most important being that of Mr. W. F. Dickes, who wrote several long articles to prove that they were the German Counts Palatine Otto Henry and his brother Philip, and that the picture represented “The Nuremberg Treaty of Religious Freedom between the Catholics and Protestants.” Happily, the matter was settled in 1895 by Miss Mary F. S. Hervey, who discovered documentary evidence of so exact a kind that no doubt remains that the portraits are those of Jean de Dinteville, seigneur de Polizy, bailly de Troyes, and a knight of the French Order of St. Michael, and his friend, George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. Mr. Dickes, however, has recently returned to the charge (1901), doubts the evidence, and still pins his faith to his Counts Palatine.

Dinteville came here as French Ambassador more than once, and was in London in that capacity from February to November, 1533, the year in which the picture was painted, and during that time De Selve paid him a visit. George de Selve was appointed to the see of Lavaur in 1526, when only eighteen, but was not consecrated Bishop until 1534, and so in the picture is not shown in episcopal dress. He was one of six brothers, nearly all of whom gained distinction as Ambassadors. He himself served as Ambassador on a number of occasions, and his piety, his profound learning, and his keen interest in all intellectual pursuits, as Miss Hervey tells us in her exhaustive study of these two men and their picture, made him one of the most remarkable men of his day.

The two men stand on each side of a high, two-shelved table. Dinteville, on the left, is gorgeously dressed in a doublet of rose satin, with a black jacket and surcoat lined with ermine. His dark hair is cut straight across his forehead. De Selve, on the right, is clad in a long brocaded gown of chocolate colour, lined with brown fur. His hair and beard are also dark. Both shelves of the table are covered with a number of books, mathematical, musical, and other instruments, including a celestial and a terrestrial globe, sundial, lute, flutes, and other emblems of the pursuits in which they were interested. The curious object in the foreground is merely a distorted skull, which, when looked at from the side, assumes its proper proportions—a kind of optical puzzle, which had some vogue in the sixteenth century. The pattern of the pavement of coloured marbles was copied by the artist from the one in the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.

The many details of the picture have been painted with Holbein’s usual accuracy and perfection. The faces of the two men are finely and delicately modelled, though their character is not quite so subtly expressed as in such a portrait as the Duchess of Milan. The dark, penetrating eyes and well-chiselled mouth of Dinteville give vitality to his intellectual face. De Selve is grave in contrast, with dark eyebrows and a more pallid complexion, and his countenance has less expression than is to be found in the other. The nobility of type of these two well-born, intellectual men is, however, admirably depicted by Holbein in a picture which is splendid both in colour and in treatment.

Holbein seems to have painted Erasmus three or four times, and as the originals were multiplied by copyists during the artist’s life, there are still a large number of portraits of the great scholar in existence, all to-day ascribed to our painter. At least two of them were sent to England by Erasmus as presents to Sir Thomas More and Archbishop Wareham, one of which was the picture now at Longford Castle, and the other the fine profile in the Louvre, which was formerly in Charles I.’s collection.

The Earl of Radnor’s Erasmus is a masterly and lifelike portrait. It forms a companion picture to the portrait of Peter Ægidius, by Quentin Matsys, also at Longford. For a long time both pictures were thought to be by the latter painter, as in 1517 these two learned men commissioned Matsys to paint a double portrait of them, which was sent as a present to Sir Thomas More.

Erasmus is represented in his black doctor’s robes, heavily trimmed with fur, and a black cap. His hands rest upon a book, bearing the inscription, partly in Greek and partly in Latin, “The Herculean labours of Erasmus of Rotterdam.” A curtain is behind his head, and on the left a stone pillar carved with fine Renaissance design. On the right a number of books are placed upon

a small shelf, and on one of the volumes is the date 1523, and a half-effaced Latin distich, in which Holbein’s name can still be read. The philosopher, turned slightly to the left, is gazing in front of him, deep in thought.

Mr. Claude Phillips has admirably described this picture (Art Journal, April, 1897). He says: “Holbein has rarely painted with a more exquisite subtlety or a firmer grip of his subject than here. The modelling of the head and hands is perfect in its searching truth and fine balance, showing none of that exaggeration and hardness of facial detail which so often mars the pictorial and obscures the intellectual conceptions in the portraits of Albrecht DÜrer. Bodily suffering and advancing age have a little extinguished physical energy, but yet the great scholar of Rotterdam appears here surely but undemonstratively portrayed in his true character. He was the chief representative of the broader humanism in the Reformation, the one man able to look calmly at the world as it was—able to weigh, to judge, but also to show toleration—that is, provided his own comfort and security were not thereby interfered with.”

The Louvre example, showing Erasmus writing, in profile, is smaller and richer in colour than the Longford example, and even more searching in its rendering of truth and character.

The superb portrait of Georg Gisze, member of the Hanse League and the London Steelyard, painted in 1532, shortly after Holbein’s return to England, and now in the Berlin Gallery, is finer in its colour and more delicate in the rendering of its details than any other of the Steelyard portraits done by the artist about this time. It is almost Flemish in the minuteness and care of its finish and its clear colour, and seems to have had unusual pains bestowed upon it, perhaps as a kind of show-piece to tempt other sitters.

The young merchant is shown in his office, behind a table covered with a cloth of Eastern design, with the various objects that he requires in his business scattered in front of him and about the room. Among them is a graceful Venetian glass holding carnations. Papers and letters are fastened to the walls, one of which he is just opening, upon which can be read the address: “To the honourable Georg Gisze, my brother, in London, England.” On the wall hangs a paper with his motto: “Nulla sine merore voluptas.” He has fair hair, and is dressed in red, with black cap and overcoat, and a white shirt with a collar of Spanish work. All the accessories, whether of silk, or linen, or gold, or steel, or glass, are painted with a fidelity to nature never excelled by the Dutchmen or Flemings of the following century, who devoted their whole career to the rendering of still-life. In Holbein’s work, however, this elaboration of detail is soon forgotten in the fascination which the vivid representation of the sitter’s personality produces in the spectator and the power displayed by the artist in seizing the essentials of a character.

Ruskin has described this portrait for us in words so eloquent and so glowing (Cornhill Magazine, March, 1860) that no excuse is needed for quoting a sentence or two here: “Every accessory is perfect with a fine perfection: the carnations in the glass vase by his side; the ball of gold, chased with blue enamel, suspended on the wall; the books, the steelyard, the papers on the table, the seal-ring with its quartered bearings—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed, every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, beneath that errorless hand. The man himself what he was—not more; but to all conceivable proof of sight, in all aspect of life or thought—not less. He sits alone in his accustomed room, his common work laid out before him; he is conscious of no presence, assumes no dignity, bears no sudden or superficial look of care or interest, lives only as he lived—but for ever. It is inexhaustible. Every detail of it wins, retains, rewards the attention with a continually increasing sense of wonderfulness. It is also wholly true. So far as it reaches, it contains the absolute facts of colour, form, and character, rendered with an unaccusable faithfulness.”

According to Dr. Woltmann, Gisze belonged to a family residing in the neighbourhood of Basle, and even to-day, in the small adjacent town of Liestall, the name, in the form of Gysin, is to be seen over many houses. Even on the picture it is spelt in more ways than one. Miss Hervey considers it to be a variation of the surname Gueiss, one of the most distinguished in the annals of the Steelyard, and well known in Cologne. Georg Gisze was deputy Alderman of the Steelyard in 1533.

Shortly after the death of Queen Jane Seymour, in October, 1537, the Privy Council began to urge the King to marry again. The lady chosen was Christina, niece of the Emperor Charles V., daughter of the King of Denmark, and the young widow of Francesco Maria Sforza, last Duke of Milan, whom she married in 1534, when she was only eleven. He died in the following year, and in 1538 she was residing in Brussels at the Court of her aunt, the Regent of the Netherlands. Holbein, as “a man very excellent in taking phisanymies,” was sent over to paint her portrait, and arrived there on March 10, accompanied by Sir Philip Hobby. A long letter to Cromwell from John Hutton, English Envoy to Flanders, gives us full details of this expedition. The lady’s portrait had just been painted by some local artist, and despatched to Cromwell, on the eve of Holbein’s arrival. When Hutton, however, saw the likeness which the latter produced in the space of three hours, which he considered “very perffight,” he sent a messenger in haste to stay the delivery of the other, telling Cromwell that it was but “sloberid” in comparison. Holbein probably made one of his usual black-and-white crayon studies touched with colour, and from this, after his return to London, painted the full-length portrait belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, which he has lent so generously for a number of years to the National Gallery.

Christina stands, almost the size of life, facing the spectator, dressed in “mourning aparel after the manner of Italy”—a black satin gown, and over it a long black cloak lined with yellow sable. A black hood covers her hair and part of her forehead, and a ruby ring is her only ornament. You cannot call her very beautiful, but her expression is fascinating in the highest degree. It is painted with the utmost simplicity and directness, and yet is stamped with real grandeur of style in every delicate stroke of the brush. Her slender form (“She is of taller stature than either of us,” wrote the Ambassadors Wriothesley and Vaughan) is admirably rendered, and Holbein, in the spirit of a true artist, has chosen to depict her in all the severity of her widow’s weeds, rather than in the bravery of the Brussels court lady, thus giving an added effect to her sweet childish countenance, which is modelled in the most masterly fashion. Her dark eyes, from under fair eyebrows, seem to admit one to her most secret thoughts, and the red lips are full of expression. The flesh tints are unusually transparent, and a faint rosy glow of health just flushes her cheeks. “She is not so white as the late Queen,” says 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 becomith her excellently well. She is higher than the Regent, a goodly personage of body and competent of beauty, of favour excellent, soft of speech, and very gentle in countenance.” It is an exquisite portrait, and one of the most precious in the country.

For some reason, probably the Papal excommunication of Henry, the Emperor suddenly became hostile to this alliance, and the negotiations were broken off. She herself seems to have been not unwilling to become an English Queen. Sir Thomas Wyatt reported that she was somewhat flighty, but Hutton, on the other hand, mentions “her honest countenance, and the few words she wisely spoke.” The popular tradition runs that she sent a respectfully sarcastic refusal to Henry, saying that “she had but one head; if she had two, one of them should be at His Majesty’s service.” She married Francis, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, in 1541.

One of the best of Holbein’s portraits of English commoners is that of Robert Cheseman in the Hague Gallery, which was formerly in the royal collections of England. With his usual directness and faultless mastery of handling, he has given us here another example of exact portraiture, illuminated by a deep insight into

character. Cheseman, who is forty-eight, wears a silk doublet of purplish-red, with the customary black overcoat trimmed with fur. His curly hair is beginning to turn gray. He holds a hooded hawk on his gloved left hand, and strokes its feathers with his right. The bird is splendidly painted, and the keen, piercing eyes and clean-cut face of its master are wonderfully rendered. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who noted it during his travels in Holland, speaks of it as “admirable for its truth and precision, and extremely well coloured.”

This picture is called erroneously in all the books “Henry VIII.’s Falconer,” but he was a person of much more importance. Robert Cheseman, of Dormanswell, near Norwood, in Middlesex, and Northcote, in Essex, was a man of wealth, and one of the leading commoners of his county. He was born in 1485, son and heir of Edward Cheseman, Cofferer and Keeper of the Wardrobe to Henry VII., and succeeded to the family estates in 1517. He was made a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex in 1528, and during his life served on a number of commissions for collecting tithes, subsidies, and so on. In 1530 he was one of the commissioners on an inquiry into the possessions of Thomas Wolsey after he was attainted, and was on the Grand Jury at the trials of Sir Geoffrey Pole and others (1538), and Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham for treason (1541). He was one of the gentlemen selected to welcome Anne of Cleves when she first landed in England, and was, in fact, one of some half-dozen men of position who represented Middlesex on such public occasions. In 1536 he supplied thirty men for the army against the Northern rebels, so that he must have been a man of substance. He married Alice, daughter of Henry Dacres, of Mayfield, Staffordshire, a Merchant Tailor and Alderman of London. These curtailed biographical notes are inserted here, as they have not been previously published.

A small work of great beauty in Hampton Court Palace, representing Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre, sometimes called Noli Me Tangere, is of unusual value to English students, as being the only sacred painting by Holbein now in this country. It has darkened greatly with age, and has suffered other damage, but is considered by most judges to be an undoubted original by the master, although Dr. Woltmann attributed it to Bartholomew Bruyn, of Cologne.

Both in treatment and in feeling this picture is very similar to the altar-piece of the Passion, in eight compartments, in the Basle Museum, and must have been painted about the same time, between 1520 and 1527. In sentiment it is one of the most poetical of Holbein’s compositions, and an admirable example of his rendering of light and shade in his first Basle period. “The early morning when it was yet dark” is most successfully suggested in the painting of the landscape background. Dawn is just breaking over the sky and distant Calvary, while the foreground is still in darkness, except for the light which radiates from the open sepulchre, where

the two angels can be seen seated at the head and the foot of the empty grave. Mary, who holds a cup of spikenard in her left hand, has turned round hastily in eager surprise, and stretches out her right hand towards the Saviour. Our Lord draws back from her, saying, “Touch Me not!” The dramatic action of the two figures is most expressive. In the background the two disciples, who have been before her at the sepulchre, are seen hastening away. Peter, still dubious as to the truth of the Resurrection, is talking eagerly and with animated gestures as he expresses his doubts; but John, who “saw and believed,” turns back his head in reproach at a comrade who can doubt even for a moment. The composition, as a whole, is marked by a simple but impressive dignity.

It seems almost certain that the first portrait painted by Holbein in England was that of Sir Thomas More. Mr. Huth’s finished portrait, a half-length of the Chancellor, is dated 1527. There are two studies for More’s head among the Windsor drawings almost identical. They are life-size, three-quarter face, looking to the right, with black cap and fur collar, done with black and red chalk. The drawing reproduced here is 16 inches high by 12 inches wide, and has been pricked for tracing. Holbein sketched the members of the More family on a larger scale than was usual with him, and all these drawings were preliminary studies for the large family group now lost, or hidden under the paint of some feebler contemporary artist in the Nostell Priory version of the picture. In these two drawings, in Mr. Huth’s portrait, and in the large sketch for the family group now at Basle, Sir Thomas is represented in the same position, so that it is probable he only gave one sitting to the artist.

This drawing is masterly, and is a splendid example of how easily Holbein seized upon the leading characteristics of a face and with a few swift strokes fixed them for our admiration for ever. In his youth More had been handsome, and, according to Erasmus, was of a fair complexion, with dark-brown hair and gray eyes. His firmly-compressed lips and his penetrating glance give to his face a sternness which he seldom displayed, except in his detestation of heretics; but fine judgment and nobility of feeling, and that mental harmony which springs from inward peace, are the leading characteristics in his face as the artist has drawn it for us here. One can see at a glance that here was a man who would always be just in his dealings with others, and unchangeable in carrying out what he knew to be his duty—a student and a man of deep learning, and yet a man of affairs and of the world, trusted by his King and admired by his equals, and losing his head on the block through his invincible honesty. Erasmus well said of him: “He possesses that beautiful ease of mind, or, still better, that piety and prudence, with which he joyfully adapts himself to everything that comes, as though it were the best that could come.”