WALL-PAINTING FOR AMERBACH HOUSE
There is a large tracing of the design in the Basel Gallery, which has evidently been taken from Holbein’s original drawing, and there are other copies, almost contemporary, of his original studies for portions of the work, one showing the lower part of the side wall with the horse and groom. The Berlin Print Room, as already noted, possesses the very beautiful drawing from Holbein’s own hand, which is the original study for the front façade, showing the musicians and three of the dancing couples of the “Bauerntanz,” with which the Basel tracing is in close agreement, while in the Amerbach Collection there is a slighter version, with certain variations, of the upper portion of the Berlin drawing, showing the balcony with figures. It is a chalk and pen drawing, touched with Indian ink.[[264]] Dr. Woltmann suggested that the man with the flat cap on the extreme left of the balcony in the Berlin drawing, who is looking down into the street, is intended for a portrait of Holbein himself. In addition, the Basel Gallery possesses good copies of the frieze with the dancers (No. 353),[[265]] and of the portion of the façade with the mounted figure of Marcus Curtius,[[266]] made by the glass-painter Niklaus Rippel in 1623 and 1590 respectively. Rippel was master of the Basel Painters’ Guild in 1587. The “Curtius” drawing is inscribed “in frontispicio domus,” and is evidently a faithful transcript of the original; so much so that by its means it is possible to obtain a very adequate idea of the grandeur of Holbein’s design, more particularly in the magnificent group of the horse and its armed rider, in which the Mantegnesque influence is unmistakable. Finally, there is in the same Gallery an excellent reconstruction of the whole frontage (No. 352), a water-colour drawing made by H. E. von Berlepsch in 1878, based upon the Berlin study and the sixteenth-century copies of Holbein’s sketches.[[267]]
One or two original studies remain, which were evidently made as designs for exterior wall-paintings of which all record has been lost. There is a slight but masterly washed pen drawing in the Amerbach Collection (Pl. [40] (1)),[[268]] representing the upper part of a house in which the irregularly-placed windows have been adapted with the greatest skill to suit the purposes of the elaborate scheme of Italian architecture, one part of which is made to recede by a series of flat columns with ornamented capitals seen in sharp perspective, while the other half appears to project, and shows the seated figure of an Emperor, possibly Charlemagne, between two windows, to which Holbein has given rounded arches with a medallion between them containing an antique head. Dr. Ganz is, no doubt, right in his suggestion that this drawing is a study for a scheme of decoration for the façade of the family house of the Amerbachs in the Rheingasse, in Little Basel, and that the figure of the enthroned Emperor is a pictorial representation of the name—“zum Kaiserstuhl”—by which the house was known. Probably Holbein received a commission for its decoration in 1519, at the time he was painting Bonifacius Amerbach’s portrait.[[269]] In the same collection there is a design for a framework to surround an ordinary square-headed window, either for internal or external wall-painting,[[270]] over which he has thrown an ornamented arch filled in with scalloping, and crowned with a brazier from which flames are blowing. It is supported by pillars of elaborate and fantastic design, broken up into various bands of rich ornament, among them ox skulls with small hanging garlands. At the base, on each side, is a nude figure of a woman with a basket of fire on her head. The window, only one half of which is shown, is supported below with corbels, the central one with a grotesque head with an iron ring suspended from its mouth. A third sketch, for the ground floor of the Hertenstein house, has been already described.[[271]]
Vol. I., Plate 40.
1. STUDY FOR A PAINTED HOUSE FRONT WITH THE FIGURE OF A SEATED EMPEROR
Basel Gallery
2. THE AMBASSADORS OF THE SAMNITES BEFORE CURIUS DENTATUS
1521-22
Fragment of the wall-painting formerly in the Basel Town Hall
Basel Gallery
LEGEND OF THE INN “ZUR BLUME”
In the collection of drawings in the Louvre there is an elaborately drawn design for the decoration of a house with a narrow frontage and high-pitched gables,[[272]] which, although not from Holbein’s own hand, bears considerable resemblance to his style and methods in carrying out large mural paintings. It may be a contemporary copy of one of his designs, or, perhaps, an original work by one of the clever Basel artists who adopted his manner. The architectural details, however, are characterised by a fantastic play of fancy carried beyond the limits Holbein usually prescribed for himself in work of this nature. Some of them are frankly impossible, and if actually carried out in brick or stone would at once fall to pieces. This element of architectural absurdity is to be seen very clearly in the large capital in the centre supported by a much weaker and smaller one, in the curious thin bands of projecting stonework with circular openings through which all the columns pass, and the equally curious circular vaulting over the door, with round openings through which two cupids bend down in the act of supporting a coat of arms. The principal features of the design are two deep bands divided by the columns into panels containing combats between sirens and grotesque men with fish-like extremities ending in spirals of foliage. On either side of the windows of the second floor double columns are set close together, between which three nude old men are striving to force themselves. On the topmost storey two figures are looking over a balcony in front of two small windows. Medallions with antique heads are freely introduced, and every part of the house-face is so lavishly covered with small ornamentation that the eye becomes confused, and the general effect produced is one of restlessness and over-elaboration. Below the ground-floor window a fictitious opening is shown, in which two large dogs are fighting over a bone. Woltmann suggests that a passage in Dr. Ludwig Iselin’s notes has reference to these two animals, and may be taken as some indication that this particular design for house-decoration was Holbein’s own, and had been carried out by him in Basel. Iselin says, in speaking of the artist’s truthfulness to nature: “He painted a dog, at which dogs running past used to bark.”[[273]]