RESUMES WORK IN COUNCIL CHAMBER

Little is known of Holbein’s work in Basel during this period. No other portrait from his brush has been so far discovered; but, happily for him, in the summer of 1530 the Town Council found some employment for him worthy of his great talents, work which occupied him for the remainder of the year. They resolved to finish the internal decoration of their Council Chamber, which Holbein had left incomplete some years earlier, and he was naturally selected as the painter most fitted to do it. For this work he received in all 72 florins, in four separate payments between July 6 and November 18, 1530, a sufficiently modest sum for five months’ work, which included at least two large wall-paintings; but, nevertheless, better pay than he had gained for his earlier frescoes in the same room, for the original arrangement was that he should decorate the whole chamber for the sum of 120 gulden, and for that sum he had covered all but the “back wall” with large pictures.

The new subjects, which may have been selected in 1521, when the work was first begun, were “Rehoboam rebuking the Elders of Israel,” and “The Meeting of Samuel and Saul.” A third subject, “Hezekiah ordering the Idols to be broken in pieces,” was probably only one of the single figures which were placed between the larger compositions. Unlike the earlier wall-paintings, of which the subjects were taken from classical antiquity, the ones upon which Holbein was now occupied were drawn from the Old Testament, and were selected for the purpose of setting forth the evil effects of bad government and the punishment which follows the obstinacy of rulers who oppose their will to the will of God. The “Hezekiah”[[788]] was chosen, no doubt, as an apt illustration of the wisdom of obeying the commands of God in the sweeping away of all false idols and images, as exemplified in the iconoclastic outbreaks in Basel itself in the previous year, the painting of which Holbein must have undertaken with mixed feelings.

Vol. I., Plate 92.

“KING REHOBOAM REBUKING THE ELDERS”
Three fragments of the wall-painting formerly in the Basel Town Hall
1530
Basel Gallery

Vol. I., Plate 93.

REHOBOAM REBUKING THE ELDERS OF ISRAEL
Study for the wall-painting in the Basel Town Hall, 1530
Basel Gallery