as painted
by Holbein in 1516. The sombre garments of both women are echoed by the
black of Meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur.
Meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a
wonderful piece of psychology in the Darmstadt picture.

In the drawing for the young girl, Anna Meyer, who kneels beside her
mother with a red rosary in her hands, she has her golden-brown hair
hanging loose down her back, as befits a girl of thirteen. But in
the painting it is coiled in glossy braids beneath some ceremonial
head-dress; this is richly embroidered with pearls, with red silk tassel
and a wreath of red and white flowers above it. This head-dress is
painted with much more beautiful precision in the older work, and the
expression of the girl's face is much more deeply devout; her hands,
too, are decidedly superior to those of the Dresden work.

This is true also of the carpet, patterned in red and green, with
touches of white and black, on a ground of deep yellow. The Dresden
carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of
Darmstadt, so much so that Waagen and others, who believe the former a
replica, think a pupil or assistant may have been responsible for this
and other details, which for some reason Holbein himself was unable to
finish.

The elder boy, with the tumbled brown hair, dressed in a light-brown
coat trimmed with red-brown velvet, and hose of cinnabar-red, with
decorations of gold clasps and tags on fine blue cords, has a
yellowish-green portemonnaie, with tassels of dull blue hanging from his
girdle. All the carnations are superb, and in the Darmstadt picture the
infant Christ wears a sweet and happy smile. In that of Dresden He looks
sad and ill; a fact which has given rise to the theory Ruskin
adopted--that the Virgin had put down the divine Child and taken up
Meyer's ailing one. But the absence of wonder on the faces of Meyer's
family, and, indeed, the familiar affection of the elder boy, would of
itself negative this theory. I have my own ideas as to this point, but
it would serve no useful purpose to go into them in this place. Of these
two sons of Meyer there is no other record. Anna alone survived her
mother, who married again after Meyer's death. Anna's daughter married
Burgomaster Remigius Faesch, or Fesch, whose grandson--Remigius Faesch,
counsellor-at-law--was the well-known art collector whose collection and
manuscript are also in the Basel Museum