o the shame of the
municipality which, at any cost, did not prevent it. Some hasty
sketches--due to individual enterprise and a sense of the dignity of
Holbein's fame--an original drawing for one of the facade-paintings,
and a few fragments of the interior paintings, which still show
themselves, by chance, in the banker's _stable wall_--these are all that
remain to speak of what must have been the enthusiastic labour of the
greater part of Holbein's twenty-first year!

CHAPTER II

HOLBEIN BASILIENSIS

1519-1526

_Holbein Basiliensis_--Enters the Painters' Guild--Bonifacius Amerbach
and his portrait--The Last Supper and its Judas--The so-called
"Fountain of Life" at Lisbon--Genius for design and symbolism in
architecture--Versatility, humour, fighting scenes--Holbein becomes a
citizen and marries--Basel in 1519--Froben's circle--Tremendous events
and issues of the time--Holbein's religious works--The Nativity and
Adoration at Freiburg--Hans Oberriedt--The Basel Passion in eight
panels--Passion Drawings--Christ in the tomb--Christ and Mary Magdalen
at the door of the sepulchre--Rathaus wall-paintings--Birth of Holbein's
eldest child--The Solothurn Madonna: its discovery and rescue--Holbein's
wife and her portraits--Suggested solutions of some biographical
enigmas--Title pages--Portraits of Erasmus--Journey to France, probably
to Lyons and Avignon--Publishers and pictures of the so-called "Dance
of Death"--Dorothea Offenburg as Venus and Lais Corinthiaca--Triumph of
the Protestant party--Holbein decides to leave Basel for a time--The
Meyer-Madonna of Darmstadt and Dresden, and its portraits.

And now it is 1519, and with it the true Hour of Holbein's destiny is
striking. Take away the coming seven years and you will still have what
Holbein is too often thought to be only--a great portrait-painter. No
greater ever etched the soul of a man on his mask. His previous and his
after achievements would still amply justify the honour of centuries.
But add these seven years, from 1519 to 1526, and dull indeed must be
the intelligence that cannot recognise the great Master, without
qualification and in the light of any thoughtful comparison with the
very greatest.

His Basel career may be said to begin here; his earlier work furnishing
the Prologue. On the 25th September, 1519, when he was about
two-and-twenty, he joined the Basel Guild of Painters; that same "Guild
of Heaven" (_Zunft