CHAPTER XV
THE RETURN TO BASEL (1528-1532)
Return to Basel and purchase of a house—Iconoclastic outbreaks in that city—Destruction of sacred paintings and sculptures—Lack of work, and death or absence of old patrons—Portrait of his wife and children—His relationships with his wife—Completion of the wall-paintings in the Council Chamber of the Town Hall—“Rehoboam rebuking the Elders”—“Meeting of Samuel and Saul”—Portrait of Erasmus painted in Freiburg—Book illustrations—Repainting the faces of the clock on the Rhine Gate—Holbein’s return to England.
UNTIL the discovery in 1870, by Dr. Édouard His-Heusler,[[775]] that Holbein purchased a house in Basel in August 1528, it was generally supposed that the painter remained in England until the spring or summer of 1529. In September of the latter year Erasmus wrote letters to Sir Thomas More and Margaret Roper thanking them very heartily for the drawing of the family picture which Holbein had brought to him. This was the study now in the Basel Gallery. Erasmus was then living in Freiburg, and it was supposed that the painter halted there on his way home on purpose to deliver this sketch and letters which he was bearing from Chelsea. This supposition has now to be abandoned.
HOLBEIN’S PURCHASE OF TWO HOUSES
There is no doubt that Holbein had received a two years’ leave of absence from the Basel Town Council, and that his only reason for leaving England, where he was busily and lucratively occupied, was the fact that he was bound by the laws of his adopted city to return within the stipulated period, or otherwise to run the risk of forfeiting his rights of citizenship, and incurring other punishment, in addition to possible trouble with his own particular guild. By an order of the Council dated 1521, no one subject to the jurisdiction of Basel was allowed to take service with, or receive pension money from, any foreign prince or community; and this law may have been one of the reasons why Holbein did not enter into Henry VIII’s service at this time, as it would be necessary before doing so to obtain the Council’s special permission, as he did later on in his career.
Holbein’s purchase of a house in Basel was made on August 29, 1528, exactly two years after the date of Erasmus’ letter to Ægidius, given to the painter on the eve of his departure for England. The record of the sale is to be found in the “Fertigungsbuch,” and from the entry it appears that both Holbein and his wife were present in person at the completion of the transaction. It was bought from the clothweaver Eucharius Rieher, and the price was 300 gulden or florins, which shows that Holbein had brought home money in his purse, though only one-third of the purchase price was paid, and the remainder secured by a mortgage. It was a two-storeyed house, overlooking the Rhine, in the St. Johann Vorstadt, next door to Froben’s bookstore, and its site is now occupied by No. 22. Within living memory it was still standing, outwardly very little changed since the days in which Holbein and his family lived in it; as also the smaller cottage next door, which the painter purchased some years later, on the 28th March 1531, for 70 gulden, from the fisherman Uly von Rynach, on part of the site of which a factory has since been erected.
ERASMUS AND MORE FAMILY GROUP
Here Holbein settled down to work again, but, if one may judge from the few examples of his brush which can be ascribed to this period, he must have found Basel a far less profitable field for his labours than England. During his absence Switzerland had fallen on evil days. At about the date of his return the religious differences had reached their climax, and in Basel violent outbreaks of hostilities were taking place. At Easter, 1528, the Council had been obliged to give way to the extent of allowing divine worship according to the Reformed ritual in some of the churches, and permitting the removal of all sacred pictures from their walls. The Council, indeed, did their best to prevent sedition. Their recommendation that “no man should call another papist or lutheran, heretic, adherent of the new faith or the old, but each should be left unharassed and unscorned in his own belief,” fell on unheeding ears.[[776]] Such prudent advice was ill-suited to the passions which had been aroused. In the following year all the Catholic members of the Council were forcibly removed by a mob of armed citizens, and this action was followed by a number of excesses. On Shrove Tuesday, 1529, a furious outburst of iconoclasm occurred. The Cathedral was attacked by a crowd of some hundreds of reformers, who broke open the doors, and pulled down and dashed to pieces all the pictures and altars. The Council issued orders and edicts which were powerless to stay the fanaticism of the rioters, who visited in turn the other churches and monasteries in the city, destroying everything that was not hastily hidden from them. On the following day, Ash Wednesday, the destruction continued. Four hundred men, headed by the public executioner, paid a second visit to the Cathedral, broke up everything that still remained, and of the fragments made five large bonfires. Pictures and wooden images were burnt, wall-paintings were whitewashed over; and however beautiful such works of art might be, their merits were insufficient to save them. The reformers’ hearts were hot against what they considered the gross idolatry of their opponents, and nothing was spared from the fire upon which they could lay their furious hands. Here and there a picture or relic was saved, among them at least one work of Holbein’s, the early “Last Supper,” already described, though it appears to have been badly damaged at the time, and restored later on.[[777]] No doubt more than one of his pictures perished, together with others by such Basel painters as Urs Graf, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, and Hans Herbster. His beautiful shutters for the Cathedral organ happily escaped; it may be that they were hung too high to be easily reached, and were thus protected from the first outbreak, and afterwards, when the edict was issued forbidding all sacred pictures in the churches, they would be allowed to remain on the walls under the order which permitted the use of all paintings of a character to which no adoration could be shown.[[778]] Erasmus, in a letter to Pirkheimer, gives a graphic description of what took place on these two days of fanatical destruction. “There was no one,” he says, “who did not fear for himself, when these dregs of the people covered the whole market-place with arms and cannons. Such a mockery was made of the images of the saints, and even of the Crucifixion, that one would have thought that some miracle must have happened. Nothing was left of the sculptures, either in the churches or in the cloisters, in the portals or in the monasteries. Whatever painted pictures remained were daubed over with whitewash, whatever was inflammable was thrown upon the pile, whatever was not was broken to pieces. Neither pecuniary nor artistic value could save anything.”
This tumultuous state of affairs proved too much for Erasmus, who had a detestation of all forms of violence, and only wished for peaceful surroundings in which to pursue his work. More than one of his noble patrons, from whom he received pensions, objected to his continued residence in a city in which the Protestant party were dominant. He had, too, some fear for his own life; for though he was an adherent of neither side, his opinions were not popular with the reformers. So he now turned his back upon the city which he had made his permanent home since 1521, and in which, old and sickly as he was, he had hoped to end his days, and removed to the neighbouring city of Freiburg, where the Catholic party were in the ascendancy. Thither Bonifacius Amerbach accompanied him, and remained with him for some time.