and short bushy beard and
moustache, a man having a broad stout person with a mixture of
dauntlessness and _bonhommie_ in his massive face.

Mr Ruskin says of Holbein, as a painter, that he was complete in
intellect; what he saw he saw with his whole soul, and what he painted
he painted with his whole might.

In deep and reverential feeling Holbein was far behind his countryman
Albert Duerer, but Holbein was far more fully furnished than Duerer
(unless indeed as Albrecht Duerer showed himself in that last picture of
'the Apostles') in the means of his art; he was a better draughtsman in
the maturity of his powers, and a far better colourist. For Hans Holbein
was not more famous for the living truthfulness of his likenesses ('a
man very excellent in making physiognomies'), than for the 'inimitable
bloom' that he imparted to his pictures, which 'he touched, till not a
touch became discernible.' Yet beneath this bloom, along with his
truthfulness, there was a dryness and hardness in Holbein's treatment of
his subjects, and he is far below Titian, Rubens, and even Rembrandt as
a portrait painter.

Holbein was in the habit of painting his larger portraits on a peculiar
green, and his miniatures on a blue background. He drew his portrait
sketches with black and red chalk on a paper tinted flesh-colour. It is
said, that with the exception, of Philip Wouwermann, no painter has been
so unfortunate in having the works of other painters attributed to him
as Hans Holbein has been, and 'that three out of every four pictures
ascribed to him are misnamed.'[37]

The 'Meier, or Meyer Madonna,' is otherwise called 'the Meier Family
adoring the infant Christ in the arms of the Virgin.' The subject is
understood to prove that it must have been painted in Holbein's youth,
before Protestantism was triumphant at Basle. The figures are the
Burgomaster Meier and his wife, whom Holbein painted twice; their son,
with a little boy _nude_ beside him; another woman, elderly, conjectured
to be a grandmother of the family, and beside her the young daughter of
the house. In the centre on a turkey carpet stands the Madonna, holding
in her arms an infant stretching out its left hand to the group of
worshippers. In course of time, and in its transfer from hand to hand, a
doubt has arisen with regard to the subject of this picture. Some
critics have regarded it as a votive picture dedicated in a private
chapel to commemorate the recovery from sickness