STUDY FOR THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY OF AUGSBURG
Silver-point drawing
Hans Holbein the Elder
British Museum
Little is known of the last eight years of his life. The “Fountain of Life” is the only picture painted by him during that period which has survived.[[64]] It is supposed that he never returned to Augsburg, but died in Isenheim; but that he spent the whole period there seems unlikely. Isenheim is close to Basel, and it is not impossible that his last days were passed under the roof of his son Hans in the latter city. A letter, dated 4th July 1526, and addressed to the Vicar of the Order of St. Anthony in Isenheim by the burgomaster of Basel, Heinrich Meltinger, bears out this supposition.[[65]] It was written on behalf of Hans Holbein the Younger, and by means of it he made a final attempt to obtain possession of, or compensation for, his father’s painting materials, which the latter had left behind him, or which had been detained for some purpose by the monastery authorities. From this letter it appears, also, that the son had made more than one previous attempt, during his father’s lifetime, and at the elder painter’s request, to get the goods returned; from which it is to be inferred that for some considerable time prior to his death Hans Holbein the Elder had left Isenheim. In 1521, as already pointed out, he was sued by Hans Kämlin for a small debt, but this does not necessarily indicate that the painter himself was in Augsburg at the time. His death took place in 1524, as is proved by an entry in the Handwerksbuch of the Augsburg Painters’ Guild of that year, in which “Hannss Holbain maller” is noted as deceased; but this again does not prove that his actual death occurred in that city.
CHAPTER II
YOUTHFUL DAYS IN AUGSBURG
Birth of Hans Holbein the Younger—Forgeries of dates on early pictures attributed to him—Various portraits bearing on the question of the year of his birth—His early life in Augsburg—The family house on the Vorderer Lech—Early training in his father’s studio—Hans Burgkmair—Augsburg and the decorative arts.
NO absolutely conclusive proof has yet been discovered of the exact date of the birth of Hans Holbein the Younger. For years the question was complicated by more than one forgery of dates and signatures on certain pictures in Augsburg, and by spurious amplifications made in the modern copies taken from certain entries in the annals of the convent of St. Catherine. Owing to these forgeries, Dr. Woltmann, in the first edition of his book,[[66]] advanced the opinion that Holbein was born in 1495; but before the publication of the first volume of the second edition of his work, in 1874, these inscriptions and entries had been proved to be falsifications, and he then altered the date to 1497,[[67]] and this is now generally accepted as correct. Equal doubt existed at one time as to the place of his birth. Among earlier writers, Carel van Mander (1604) and Patin (1676) stated that he was born in Basel, while Matthis Quad gave his birthplace as Grünstadt in the Palatinate. Sandrart (1675) was the first biographer to name Augsburg, which modern research has shown to be correct. The forgeries, no doubt, were the result of the discovery that Holbein was not a Swiss, as had been usually supposed, and were intended to supply convincing evidence that he was of German origin, and a citizen of Augsburg, and also to furnish proof of the precocity of his youthful genius.
THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH
The chief forgery was an inscription on a picture in the Augsburg Gallery (Nos. 74-77), dated 1512, which until 1845 had always been rightly regarded as the work of the elder Holbein. This picture is one of the four panels which originally formed the inner and outer sides of the two shutters of an altar-piece or shrine painted for the convent of St. Catherine.[[68]] The two inner panels represent the Martyrdom of St. Catherine[[69]] and the Legend of St. Ulrich, the patron saint of Augsburg; the outer ones the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and the Virgin and St. Anne teaching the Infant Christ to walk. On the panel representing St. Catherine the date 1512 occurs on a votive tablet containing a Latin prayer to the saint, while on the old original frame the name of the painter, “Hans Holbain,” the two last letters of the surname now defaced, stands in gold letters.[[70]] It was upon the panel representing the Virgin and St. Anne with the Infant Christ[[71]] that the false inscription was placed. In this picture Mary and her Mother are seated, each holding a hand of the youthful Saviour, who stands between them on the bench making his first attempts to walk. Three small angels hold up a curtain behind them, and at the top of the panel is a band of rich Renaissance ornamentation, with two cupids blowing horns.[[72]] St. Anne holds an open book on her lap with her left hand; and when, in 1854, the panel was separated from its obverse side and cleaned and restored, a Latin inscription upon this book came to light, parts of which were hidden by the hand of the saint. This inscription stated that the picture had been painted “by order of the venerable and most pious mother Veronica Welser—Hans Holbain, of Augsburg, at the age of 17.”[[73]] Before this Dr. Waagen[[74]] and several other critics had attributed this altar-piece to the younger Holbein because of supposed differences in style between it and the greater number of the authenticated works by the father. The newly-discovered inscription, which was accepted as genuine by Dr. Woltmann and most German writers, was considered to afford final proof of the truth of Waagen’s contention, though a few, among them Herman Grimm, refused to credit it. It was not until after the death of A. Eigner, the keeper of the Augsburg Gallery, and the originator of the falsification, in November 1870, that it was possible to apply a practical test to it, with the result that it proved to be a modern forgery. Upon the application of turpentine the whole of the inscription disappeared, and traces of a much earlier and badly-defaced one were found beneath it. The discovery of its fictitious nature led to further investigation, and the final abandonment of the date 1495 as the year of the painter’s birth, while the picture is now rightly restored to the older artist who painted it.
THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH