THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE
Hans Holbein the Elder
National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon
Although he does not appear to have had many opportunities of exercising his skill as a portrait-painter, his very numerous studies in this branch of art show abilities of a very high order, and possess many of the qualities, though in a lesser degree, which his son afterwards developed to so high a pitch of perfection. Indeed, in these portrait-studies of men his art attains its greatest strength and finest accomplishment. Sixty-nine of his drawings of heads are preserved in the Imhoff Collection in the Berlin Museum. They are on the leaves of sketch-books, and were made between 1509 and 1516, in silver-point and pencil, some of them strengthened with white and with red chalk. A smaller number of heads from the same series are in the Copenhagen Museum, and at Basel and Bamberg, while isolated examples are to be found in the print rooms of more than one European museum. Some of the Basel drawings were made before 1508, and in the collection of M. Léon Bonnat, which contains several fine silver-points by the elder Hans, there is one of the Augsburg goldsmith, Jörig Seld, dated 1497.
THE ELDER HOLBEIN’S STUDIES
These drawings, which at one time were all ascribed to his son, and are so attributed in the first edition of Dr. Woltmann’s book, represent citizens of Augsburg in all classes of life, many of them, no doubt, personal friends of the painter, who, in a number of cases, has written their names on the sketches. There is no evidence to show that the majority of them were preliminary studies for portraits for which he had received commissions; they were done partly for his own amusement and practice, and partly to serve as models for figures in his sacred paintings. They form, nevertheless, a very valuable record of the Augsburg life of his day, and so may be compared, in the wideness of their range at least, with the more brilliant series of drawings by his son. In numerous instances the same sitter has been drawn two or three times; of Johannes Schrott[[35]] and Hans Griesher,[[36]] monks of St. Ulrich, there are no less than seven and six respectively. Among them there are portraits of the Emperor Maximilian,[[37]] on horseback, in helmet, and with sword, and of his grandson, afterwards Charles V,[[38]] with a falcon on his wrist, inscribed “herzog karl vo burgundy.” As Charles became Duke of Burgundy in 1515, and King of Castile in 1516, the drawing must have been made in the former year. There are several portraits of members of the great Fugger family, among them Jacob Fugger,[[39]] the head of the clan; his nephews, Raimund[[40]] and Anton[[41]]; his cousin, Ulrich Fugger the Younger,[[42]] and his wife, Veronica Gassner[[43]]; and several more. Other leading Augsburg families are represented in heads of Gumprecht Rauner,[[44]] Hans Nell,[[45]] Hans Pfleger,[[46]] and Hans Herlins,[[47]] and members of the court circle by such men as Kunz von der Rosen,[[48]] the Emperor Maximilian’s lifelong friend and adviser. Included among these drawings are representations of more than one of Holbein’s fellow-workers in art, such as Hans Schwartz[[49]] the wood-carver, and Burkhart Engelberg,[[50]] stone-carver and architect. Representatives of more lowly pursuits are Gumpret Schwartz,[[51]] schoolmaster, and one Grün,[[52]] a tailor, and certain “merry fellows” of the artisan class. The heads of ladies are not very numerous, but one of them, the wife of the Guildmaster Schwartzensteiner,[[53]] a typical example of the “good wife” of Augsburg, has been drawn no less than three times. A less reputable personage among them is Anna, known as “the Lomentlin,”[[54]] who was twice expelled from the town for serious misconduct, and returned in the end apparently repentant, afterwards posing as a saint, and professing to be able to live without meat or drink. One of the most important groups in this series of drawings represents the monks of St. Ulrich, Augsburg’s famous monastery—Heinrich Grün,[[55]] Leonhard Wagner,[[56]] Conrad Merlin,[[57]] Johannes Schrott, Hans Griesher, and others. Finally, there are a few studies of heads of members of the artist’s family, including his own likeness, that of his brother Sigmund,[[58]] and the double portraits of his two sons, which have been already mentioned.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY OF AUGSBURG
There is a small finished portrait of a lady of Augsburg, whose Christian name only, Maria, is known, in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook, at Richmond, which is the sole example of portraiture by the elder Holbein in England; and, indeed, with the exception of the portrait of a man, dated 1513, in the Lanckoronski Collection in Vienna,[[59]] which is also attributed to him, it is very possibly the only specimen of such work by him in existence. This portrait is of particular interest, because it conflicts with the statement of Dr. Glaser, that he never painted an independent portrait.[[60]] It was formerly attributed to the younger Holbein, but most critics failed to see his hand in it; and, when exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1906, it was described as of the South German School, with a note recording that the names of Schaffner and Ambrosius Holbein had been tentatively suggested in connection with it. Dr. Friedländer, however, considered it to be a work of the younger Holbein in his early Basel period. In 1908 Dr. Carl Giehlow suggested that the older painter was its real author, and drew attention for the first time to the fact that a fine study for it exists in the British Museum (Pl. [5]); and further evidence in favour of this attribution has been brought forward by Mr. Campbell Dodgson.[[61]]
The picture is on panel, 13¾ by 10½ inches. The sitter wears a white cap with embroidered margin of fleur-de-lis pattern. Her yellow bodice, trimmed at the edges with a broad band of black velvet, opens in front to show a white under-garment patterned in black and gold. The girdle is studded with gold ornaments. The hands are hidden, being pushed within the sleeves, as though for warmth. The background is plain blue, and on the back of the panel is painted “Maria” in an abbreviated form, evidently the sitter’s Christian name. On the front of the old original frame is inscribed: “Also.was.ich.vir.war.in.dem. 34. iar.” (So was I in truth in my thirty-fourth year.)
The silver-point drawing in the British Museum is, says Mr. Dodgson, “a delicate piece of work, in perfect preservation, and so fresh and spontaneous that it must be regarded as a study from life, preparatory to the picture, and not as a copy from the latter. It is significant that only the main outlines of the costume are noted, and that ornamental details, which it would have taken a long time to draw, are reserved for the final execution of the portrait in oils; nothing of the kind is even suggested except the fleur-de-lis pattern on the cap. All the essential outlines of the figure itself, on the other hand, are drawn with a careful and expressive line, which notes the folds of the flesh beneath the chin more accurately than the creases of the sleeve at the elbow.” This drawing, like the portrait itself, is neither signed nor dated, so that it may be suggested, by those who see in the finished work the hand of the younger Holbein, that the drawing also is the work of the son. There is, however, a second drawing of the same lady in the Berlin Museum,[[62]] one of the series of the elder Holbein’s studies, in which she is represented in almost the same position, and wearing the same dress, though apparently several years older.[[63]] It does not seem to be a repetition of the earlier drawing, but a fresh portrait from life made after a considerable interval. The Berlin drawing is undoubtedly the work of the elder painter, while the one in the British Museum is closer to his style than to that of his son at the period in question, when the latter was still in his teens, as shown in such early Basel drawings as the studies of Meyer and his wife. The new attribution, therefore, appears to be the correct one, the evidence in favour of the elder Holbein being, if not conclusive, at least very strong.
Vol. I., Plate 5.
