ithout a frame, suspended by a string
passed 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 title--"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 associates.

This work, too, is the most precious of all that have come down to us of
Holbein's imaginative compositions,