atest, we must not
forget that his range was somewhat limited. We might nowadays call him a
specialist, for in England he painted nothing but portraits, and very
few of his pictures contained anything besides the single figure, or
head, of the subject. The famous exception is the large picture called
_The Ambassadors_, which was purchased at an enormous price from the
Longford Castle collection, and is now in the National Gallery.
Important and interesting as this is as showing us how Holbein could
fill a large canvas, there is no doubt that he is far happier in simple
portraiture, and that the L60,000 expended on _Christina Duchess of
Milan_ was, relatively, a better investment for the nation. In the
famous half-lengths like the _George Gisze_ at Berlin (which was painted
in London) and the _Man with the Hawk_, where the portrait is surrounded
by accessories, Holbein is perhaps at his very best; but it is as a
painter of heads, simply, that he influenced the English School, and set
an example which, alas! has never been attainable since.

For one thing, which is apart altogether from talent or genius,
Holbein's method was never followed in later times, namely, the practice
of making carefully finished drawings in crayon before painting a
portrait in oils. He was a wonderful draughtsman, and in the series of
over eighty drawings at Windsor we have even more life-like images of
the persons represented than their finished portraits. I am not aware
that any portrait drawings exists of Holbein's contemporaries or
successors in England earlier than one or two by Van Dyck. There are a
good many belonging to the seventeenth century, but with one or two
exceptions they are little more than sketches. And though sketches have
only survived by accident, as it were, not being intended for anything
more than the artist's own purposes, finished drawings would have been
kept, like Holbein's, with much greater care.

In a word, then, Holbein's first and chief business was in rendering the
likeness of the sitter. Being a

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--HANS HOLBEIN

ANNE OF CLEVES

_Louvre, Paris_]

born genius, he accomplished far more than this; but it is important in
tracing the development of the English School of painting to remember
that its origin was not in the idealization of religious sentiment, but
in the realization of the human features. From the time of the first
great genius to that of the next, exactly a century la