LARGE DECORATIVE WORKS AND WALL-PAINTINGS.
The practice of decorating both the exterior and the interior of houses with large wall-paintings, so universal throughout Italy in the sixteenth century, was by no means uncommon north of the Alps; but in Germany this class of work was badly paid, and the painter employed made use of much mechanical assistance, and did not lavish too much personal care upon it. No other Northern artist carried out work of this nature with such brilliancy and such success as Holbein. It is probable that the subjects of his wall-paintings were chosen for him by his patrons to suit their own tastes; but his fertility of imagination was so great that his renderings of the selected themes were stamped with his original genius. The designs were not carried out by him in a slipshod manner, without understanding, but were masterpieces of dramatic power and composition, and, no doubt, equally artistic in their colour schemes.
In his decorations for the house of Jacob von Hertenstein, in Lucerne, many of the subjects were taken from ancient times. The façade was covered with scenes from secular history, pageants, and combats of children, in a setting of florid Renaissance architecture, an important feature being a great triumphal procession of Cæsar, in its main lines copied from Mantegna. In the interior the walls of the chapel were covered with religious paintings, and the largest chamber was given up to hunting scenes with landscape backgrounds and a representation of The Fountain of Youth, with many humorous details.
There is no doubt that he decorated a number of houses in Basle in a similar manner, though we have records of only one of them; but drawings of several elaborately ornamented façades are preserved in various collections, which show that he was often occupied with this kind of work in his younger days. The most famous of these decorated buildings was, as already stated, known as The House of the Dance, from a broad frieze running across the second story, which represented a number of peasants boisterously dancing to the music of the bagpipes. The whole front was embellished with painted Renaissance architecture. The great variety of subjects he included, and the elaborate details, may be studied in a sketch preserved in the Basle Museum.
The subjects chosen for the interior decoration of the Basle Town Hall were also from classical antiquity. Richly ornamented columns divided the walls into a number of spaces, which were filled with paintings representing the vital importance to a community of impartial justice. Holbein’s subjects were Charondas, the Lawgiver, plunging the Sword into his own Heart; Zaleucus ordering his own Right Eye to be torn out instead of his Son’s; Curius Dentatus sending back the Ambassadors of the Samnites; and Sapor, King of Persia, using the Body of the captured Emperor Valerian as a step from which to mount his Horse. The smaller panels were single figures, such as Christ, David, Justice, Wisdom, and Moderation. The remaining wall in the Hall, painted in 1530, was covered with two large Biblical subjects—Rehoboam dismissing the Messengers of the Israelites with fierce threats, and The meeting of Samuel and Saul, when the Prophet angrily reproves the King for having disobeyed the command of God in sparing the Amalekites. The original sketches for both these compositions still exist, and are sufficient to prove how fine the completed pictures must have been. The vehement gesture of Rehoboam is well conceived, and the composition of the Samuel and Saul is masterly.
The two large allegorical friezes for the banquet-room of the Steelyard merchants in London must have been equally fine. The original sketch for The Triumph of Riches (Louvre) shows how easily the genius of the artist adapted itself to this kind of work. The figures in these two compositions, which were done in tempera on canvas, were life-size. They soon became famous, and in 1574 were copied by Zucchero, who, according to Carl van Mander, declared they were as fine as anything accomplished by Raphael. Such triumphal processions as these were, of course, a favourite method of decoration in his day, of which Mantegna’s Triumph of Cæsar was the most famous. In The Triumph of Riches he depicted Plutus, God of Wealth, seated in a car drawn by four horses, with Fortune in front, her veil flying behind her, scattering gold among the accompanying crowd, which is made up of many men of antiquity famous for their wealth, luxury, or avarice. In The Triumph of Poverty Poverty herself, an ancient and miserable hag, and her comrade, Misfortune, are drawn in a poor barrow by two asses, Stupidity and Inactivity, and two oxen, Negligence and Sloth. The vehicle is driven by Hope, who is accompanied by Industry, Memory, and Experience, who distribute axe or hammer, spade or flail, symbols of work, among the poverty-stricken people who crowd round.
In all these large decorative works Holbein displayed the greatest fertility of invention, and a power of composition of a very high order. The sense of life and movement in all the figures, and the appropriateness of the gestures, are alike admirable. In some of his wall-paintings he showed a keen sense of humour; and that joy of life, as felt by the Teuton of his day in his moments of relaxation and merriment, is admirably expressed. There is, too, an exuberance of invention in the architectural and ornamental details which is one of the most striking features of this side of his art, showing how quickly and completely he had made the new ideas of the Renaissance his own.