While Holbein was carrying out the earlier paintings, the sculptor Martin Lepzelter was also at work in the Council Chamber. He carved two half-length figures of prophets and four coats of arms for the pillars which supported the ceiling, for which he was paid eight Basel pounds on August 3, 1521.[[298]]
When, on the 29th November 1522, on the Saturday before St. Andrew’s Day, Holbein received a final payment of twenty-two Basel pounds and ten shillings, which was the balance of the 120 gulden he was to receive for the whole work, he had completed two walls of the Council Chamber, and he felt that he had more than earned the amount of his commission, although the back wall was still untouched. He, therefore, made representations to the Council to this effect, and they appear to have felt the justice of the claim, as they could hardly have failed to do, when they saw in how brilliant a manner the completed portion had been carried out. In consequence, they agreed that he had fully earned the money, and ordered the balance to be paid to him, deciding “to let the back wall alone till further orders.”[[299]] In any case, as the winter had begun, it would have been necessary to postpone the completion of the work until the following spring, and, no doubt, it was the original intention that Holbein should finish the room as soon as the season permitted. For some reason, however, nothing was done in the matter until after his return from his first visit to England. Possibly the Council were too busily occupied in attempting to keep order in a city in which the spread of the new opinions brought about by the Reformation was already dividing the townsfolk into two separate camps. In the spring of 1522, also, Basel was engaged in several military enterprises, which would cause the Council to hesitate before spending money upon such luxuries as art, which could be dispensed with until times were less critical and the city’s affairs more prosperous.
CHAPTER VII
DESIGNS FOR PAINTED GLASS AND OTHER STUDIES
Holbein’s work as a designer for the glass-painters—Eight panels of saints—The “Prodigal Son”—The “Two Unicorns”—Designs with landsknechte at Berne, Basel, Berlin, and Paris—Heraldic drawings for Erasmus and others—Designs showing the influence of North German art—“Virgin and St. John”—The “Annunciation”—“St. Elizabeth”—“Virgin and Child with kneeling donor”—The great “Passion” series—Studies of costumes of Basel ladies—“St. Adrian”—Studies from the nude—“A Fight”—Animals.
IN addition to his commissions, both public and private, for wall-paintings, Holbein was frequently employed in the preparation of designs for artificers in more than one branch of decorative art. The Amerbach Collection is rich in works of this class, more particularly in designs for glass windows. It must be remembered in studying these “scheibenrisse” that they were intended for painted, and not for stained, glass. The older method of employing translucent glass of various tints, in which the colour is incorporated in the body of the glass itself, so that the window depended for its beauty on its transparency, had already become, in the Switzerland of Holbein’s day, a little-practised and, in some districts, an almost forgotten art, its place being taken by glass, usually white, on which the design was painted in enamel colours and afterwards permanently fixed by refiring. Such glass painting produced the effect of a semi-opaque design on a translucent ground, and, beginning merely with a few brown lines to indicate the features, or the patterns on a dress, it had gradually developed, in Germany and Switzerland, into a method of pictorial representation which imitated as closely as possible a painted picture, and was, therefore, in marked contrast to the older and more beautiful art, in which the great aim of the artist was to produce a lovely effect of transparent colour. In the newer method, which in reality was opposed to the true nature of the medium employed, but which nevertheless became a thing of beauty when designed by a master, small panels, as a rule, were used, which were surrounded by plain white glass, so that they had the appearance of little pictures set in the middle of a window. The panels being small ones, and the subjects on them drawn on a small scale, it was necessary that the panes should be placed near the ground so that they could be properly seen, and this, again, made it essential that the draughtsmanship should be as careful and delicate as possible, design having usurped the place of colour. These glass paintings were usually surrounded by a framework of a decorative nature which divided them sharply from the plain glass around them, and helped still more to produce the effect of a picture. The lines of leadwork, which, in the older method, held the pieces of vari-coloured glass together, were abandoned as much as possible, as they naturally marred the delicate pictorial effect of the work, and were sometimes confined to the boundary lines of the panel. Under such conditions it was natural that the glass-workers should turn to artists for their supply of designs, since accurate draughtsmanship was now all-important.
Holbein, who was largely employed by the Basel glaziers and glass-painters for this purpose, made the freest and finest use of this new convention in the decoration of windows. The convention was, no doubt, a wrong one, and in the end all but extinguished the older and more beautiful art, but Holbein took it as he found it, and brought to it all his mastery of design and purity of line, so that the panels he produced were of great beauty and fine decorative effect. In his day glass-painting was no longer confined to the services of the Church, but was introduced into the windows of all private houses of importance, usually in the form of single panes with the householder’s coat of arms, or with sacred or profane subjects, according to his tastes. Thus he had many opportunities of showing his skill in this form of decoration, and he made use of a great variety of subjects. In some instances, such as the “Passion” series described below, the treatment is frankly pictorial, and the decorative effect is confined to the framework of Renaissance architecture within which the subject is set; but in others, and more particularly those intended for the display of shields with armorial bearings, the design becomes largely a decorative one, in which the artist gives free play to his imagination and taste for ornamentation in the Italian manner. Whatever the subject, however, each drawing displays wonderfully free yet delicate draughtsmanship, skilful arrangement of the design in the space to be filled, and extraordinary facility of invention. The studies appear often to have been made to the exact size of the panel they were to decorate, and, as a rule, Holbein left the question of colour to the taste of the glass-painter; in a few cases, however, he indicated it by the addition of one or two slight tints. There can be little doubt that they were carried out largely in that combination of pale yellow for the higher lights and brown or grisaille for the darker portions and shadows which was the customary practice in Switzerland at that period, with touches of more positive colour here and there in the dresses of the figures, the landscape backgrounds, and the coats of arms. The designs are in most cases drawn with the reed pen and washed with Indian ink.
EIGHT PANELS OF SAINTS
Only two or three of these designs, of which some thirty or more are in existence, are dated, and, with the exception of four or five made during his sojourn in Lucerne,[[300]] they were all produced between the years 1519 and 1525 or 1526. Among the earliest are eight panels of Saints at Basel (Nos. 333-40),[[301]] which were designed in pairs, and were to be placed side by side in the two divisions of a single window, the architectural framework and background in which the figures are set corresponding in almost all details in each pair of designs, so that it is evident that they were intended to be seen together, forming between them a complete picture. They were probably produced for the decoration of some large hall, or the aisle of a church. Two other drawings belonging to the same series are contemporary copies after Holbein from the hand of some follower, one of which bears the date 1520 and the coat of arms of the town of Basel, proving that the designs were made, most probably towards the close of 1519, shortly after his return from Lucerne. They appear to have been done for the cloisters at Wettingen.