e of "this mortal"; and that the sweetest flower that blows is but
an exquisite moment of transfigured clay.

He smells the mould above the rose; yet how he draws the rose! The
brazen arrogance of pomp, the pearl on a woman's neck, the shimmer of a
breaking bubble, the wrinkles in a baby's foot, the beauty of life, the
pathos of life, the irony and the lust of life,--he has painted them
all, as he saw them all, in the phantasmagoric Procession of Being
betwixt garret and throne.

He has painted each, too, with that genius for seizing the essential
quality which _is_ the thing, that never forsook him from Augsburg to
Saint Andrew's Undershaft; that singular, vivid, original genius which
can well afford to let his grave be forgotten, whose works build for
him, as Hans Holbein--

_One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die._

FOOTNOTES.

1: The name used thus, without further identification, is to be taken
throughout these pages to mean Hans Holbein the _Younger_.

2: Variously written Meyer, Meier, Mejer, Meiger, or Megger. Baer is also
written _Ber_, or _Berin_.

3: I am deeply indebted to the personal kindness and trouble of Sir
Martin Gosselin, K.C.M.G., British Minister at the Court of Portugal,
for greatly facilitating my own study of this interesting picture.

4: I am indebted to the personal kindness of the discoverer's son, Herr
Direktor Zetter-Collin of the Solothurn Museum, for these details. But
the whole story, as well as Herr Zetter-Collin's contributions to the
history of the work, should be read in his own absorbingly interesting
monograph:--"_Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn. (...) Ihre
Geschichte, etc._" 1902.

5:
_"Die Liebe zu Gott Heist charite.
Wer Liebe hat der Tragt kein Hass."_

A CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL
EXISTING WORKS OF
HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER

ARRANGED, SO FAR AS CAN BE KNOWN,
IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE

** signifies--_Superlative qualities._

* signifies--_Of some particular importance._

? signifies--_Authorities differ._ Held by some (and by the writer)
to have been, in its original condition, the work of
Holbein's own hand.

I.

EARLIEST INDIVIDUAL WORKS (BEFORE GOING TO BASEL)

? St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Barbara. Oils. (Wings of the St.
Sebastian altar-piece.) Munich Gallery.

Virgin and Child. Oils. Basel Museum. (Earliest signed work known.