self
with the whys and wherefores of things, not satisfied with the simple
pleasure that sight bestows. In his engravings, even more than in his
pictures, we ponder the hidden meanings; we are not content to look
and rejoice in beauty, though there is much to charm the eye. His
problems were the problems of life as well as the problems of art.

The other great artist of Germany, Hans Holbein the younger, was the
son of Hans Holbein the elder, a much esteemed painter in Augsburg.
This town was on the principal trade route between Northern Italy and
the North Sea, so that Venetians and Milanese were constantly passing
through and bringing to it much wealth and news of the luxury of their
own southern life. As a result the citizens of Augsburg dressed more
expensively and decorated their houses more lavishly than did the
citizens of any other town in Germany. After a boyhood and youth spent
at Augsburg, Holbein removed to Basle. He was a designer of
wood-engravings and goldsmiths work and of architectural decoration,
besides being a painter. In those days of change in South Germany,
artists had to be willing to turn their hands to any kind of work they
could get to do. North of the Alps, where the Reformation was upsetting
old habits, an artist's life was far from being easy. Reformers made
bonfires of sacred pictures and sculptured wooden altar-pieces. Indeed
the Reformation was a cruel blow to artists, for it took away Church
patronage and made them dependent for employment upon merchants and
princes. Except at courts or in great mercantile towns they fared
extremely ill. Altar-pieces were rarely wanted, and there were no more
legends of saints to be painted upon the walls of churches.

The demand for portraiture, on the other hand, was increasing, whilst
the growth of printing created a new field for design in the preparation
of woodcuts for the illustration of books. Thus it came to pass that
the printer Froben, at Basle, was one of the young Holbein's chief
patrons. We find him designing a wonderful series of illustrations
of _The Dance of Death_, as well as drawing another set to illustrate
_The Praise of Folly_, written by Erasmus, who was then living in Basle
and frequenting the house of Froben. Erasmus was a typical scholar
of the sixteenth century, belonging rather to civilized society as
a whole than to any one country. He moved about Europe from one centre
of learning to another, alike at home in educated cir