CHRIST, THE MAN OF SORROWS
Diptych, painted in brown monochrome, with blue sky
Basel Gallery

MARY, MATER DOLOROSA
Diptych, painted in brown monochrome, with blue sky
Basel Gallery

DRAWING OF THE “HOLY FAMILY”

There is a drawing in the Basel Gallery representing the “Holy Family” (Pl. [34]),[[223]] which is remarkable for the rich setting of Renaissance architecture in which Holbein has placed his figures. The arrangement is so elaborate that the latter at first appear to be of only secondary importance. On the topmost of a flight of steps the Infant Christ is learning to walk, his hands held by his mother and Anna, who are seated on either side of him. On the left the aged Joachim, whose pronounced features recall more than one head in the earlier “Passion” series, is looking on from behind a pillar, while Joseph stands with his arm round another pillar on the opposite side. Behind the group is a semicircular niche, the upper part scalloped like a shell, supported by columns and outstanding pillars, the latter with a sculptured frieze of putti round the base. The capitals of the columns and the frieze which they support are decorated with foliated designs in which figures are mingled. A lunette in the arch which crowns the niche is ornamented in a similar way, and contains a tablet with the signature “Hans Hol.” Over a projecting cornice is a sculptured figure of Samson slaying the lion. The architectural motive throughout is strongly Italian, and, indeed, in parts bears a striking resemblance to the Porta della Rana of the cathedral of Como,[[224]] while the whole drawing furnishes still further strong evidence that Holbein must have crossed the Alps, and that designs such as this were not mere efforts of his imagination. It is a pen drawing on a brown-red ground, washed with grey-black and heightened with white in the parts where the light falls, and its date is about 1520 or 1521. It is a study for a picture, or, more probably, for a wall-painting, to be placed at some height, as the horizon-line is well below the level of the ground. The strongly-marked perspective of the background, too, which slants rapidly towards the right, suggests such a purpose, and that it was to form the left wing of some considerable scheme of wall decoration, with a more important central subject, and a corresponding right wing. A smaller drawing, also at Basel, of the same date and style, a pen and wash drawing, heightened with white on a grey ground, represents the Virgin, seated on a similar high step between two pillars, suckling the Child.[[225]] With the exception of the two columns, one of which is unfinished, the background is left blank, but in the painting for which it was a study it is natural to suppose that the architectural setting would have been as elaborate as in the “Holy Family,” which it resembles in its low horizon-line.

Vol. I., Plate 34.

THE HOLY FAMILY
Washed drawing on a red ground
Basel Gallery

There is a third drawing, in the Städtisches Museum, Leipzig, which belongs to the same period as the two just described, and has many points in common with them.[[226]] It is a pen drawing heightened with white on a dark grey ground, and represents the Madonna seated on a stone bench over which her cloak is spread, supporting the Infant Christ in his first attempts to walk. The Child, with one arm and leg uplifted, is laughing with delight, and the attitude of the Virgin, with head bent down, and her long hair blown on one side as though by a breeze, is one of great beauty. In this arrangement of the hair, though more free, and in the type of the Madonna’s face, though more beautiful, this drawing bears a close resemblance to the more elaborate of the two in the Amerbach Collection. It is signed and dated “H. H.” and “1519” on two panels on either side of the carpet or pavement beneath the Virgin’s feet, and was possibly made shortly after Holbein’s return from Lucerne to Basel. It is a most sympathetic and natural study of maternal love and the happiness of childhood, and has a grace and charm which the two other drawings, made at about the same date, do not possess in the same degree.[[227]]