home for the greater part of his life is
certain; and the rate-books show that after the leather-dresser had
disappeared from their register of residents in the retail business
quarter of the city, in the neighbourhood of the Lech canals, Hans
Holbein the Elder was, in 1494, a householder in this very place. For
some years the name of "Sigmund, his brother," is bracketed with his;
but about 1517 Sigmund Holbein established himself in Berne, where he
accumulated a very respectable competence, which, at his death in 1540,
he bequeathed to his "dear nephew, Hans Holbein, the painter," at that
time a citizen of Basel. Sigmund also was a painter, but no unquestioned
work of his is known.

There is nothing to show who was the wife of Sigmund Holbein's elder
brother, Hans. But by 1499 this elder Hans had either a child or
children mentioned with him (_sein kind_, applying equally to one or
more). In all probability this is the earliest discoverable record
of Hans Holbein the Younger, and his elder brother Ambrose. In all
probability, too, Hans was then about two years old, and "Prosy" a year
or two older. At one time it was vaguely thought that the elder Hans had
three sons; and Prosy, or "Brosie," as it was sometimes written, got
converted into a "Bruno" Holbein. But no vestige of an actual Bruno is
to be found. And as Ambrose Holbein's trail, whether in rate-books or
art-records, utterly vanishes after 1519, it will be seen that for the
most part of the younger Holbein's life he had no brother. Hence it is
easy to understand how his uncle Sigmund's Will speaks only of "my dear
nephew."

Hans the elder lived far on in his younger son's life. His works attest
that he had talents and ideals of no mean order. But I do not propose
to enter here upon the vexed question as to how far the "Renaissance"
characteristics of the later works attributed to his hand are his own or
his son's. Learned and exhaustive arguments have by turns consigned the
best of these works to the father, to the son, and back again to the
father. In at least one instance of high authority the same writer has,
at different periods, held a brief for both sides and for opposite
opinions! In this connection, as on the battlefield of some of the
son's greatest paintings, the single-minded student of Holbein may not
unprofitably draw three conclusions from the copious literature on the
subject:--First, that a working hypothesis is not of necessity the right
one;