ST. ELIZABETH, WITH KNEELING KNIGHT AND BEGGAR
Design for painted glass
Basel Gallery
In composition and technique the foregoing drawing resembles a design for a glass painting in the Basel Collection, representing “St. Elizabeth” (Pl. [44]),[[333]] like the last named touched with bistre. The figure of the saint is placed within a semicircular niche, round which run a number of slender, decorated pillars, apparently of wood, which support the dome-shaped roof with its large rosettes in compartments and a frieze of ox-heads and ribbons. St. Elizabeth, who is dressed in the rich costume of a noblewoman or wealthy burgher’s wife, with her hair covered by a long veil which falls down her back, holds up the front of her gown with her right hand in the customary Basel manner, and with the other pours wine or water into a bowl held by a kneeling and almost naked beggar, who gazes up into her face. On the other side of her kneels a bearded knight in full armour, with hands raised in prayer, his feathered helmet and his mailed gloves on the ground before him. He is evidently the donor of the window for which the drawing is the original design. His breastplate, with its high gorget, and his other accoutrements, resemble those worn by St. Ursus in the Solothurn picture, and the kneeling beggar recalls the penitent in the same work. The saint, a very graceful and beautifully-drawn figure, is placed on a low circular platform of wood or stone, giving the suggestion of a work of sculpture. The whole is strongly reminiscent of the more elaborate monumental tombs of the Italian Renaissance erected in the interior of some church. At the bottom of the drawing, on either side, rise the capitals of two columns, as though the niche in which the figures are placed were raised at some considerable height from the ground. These capitals bear small boys in Roman helmets holding empty shields. The graceful and refined architecture of this drawing suggests, according to Dr. Ganz, that it was designed after Holbein’s journey to Montpellier in 1523, during which he became acquainted with the fine buildings of the French Renaissance in Besançon, Dijon, Lyon, and elsewhere.
“ST. ELIZABETH WITH KNEELING DONOR”
The same influence is to be seen in a second glass design at Basel, representing the Virgin with the Child in her arms and a kneeling donor on the left (Pl. [45]),[[334]] in which the architectural setting is even more beautiful than in the one just described, of which it is a free variant. The Virgin stands, crowned, on a low sculptured pedestal in front of a shallow niche under a circular arch beneath a pointed vaulting, the filling in of which is carved like a scallop-shell, as in the “Meyer Madonna.” The pilasters which support it and the frieze of Renaissance ornamentation are flat, and the whole setting is admirable in its restraint and quiet beauty, and its well-balanced masses. The Virgin is surrounded with projecting rays from head to foot, a symbol of the Immaculate Conception, and the whole figure, like that in the foregoing design, is of tall, fine proportions, unlike so many of Holbein’s figures in his earlier drawings, and gives the impression of a carved wooden statue with rays of metal or gilded wood. The Child in her arms is kicking out his legs, and raises one chubby fist in the air, looking over his mother’s arm with a cross expression, as though angry at having been lifted from the ground. The armed, kneeling knight appears to be the same donor as in the other drawing, but is turned more towards the spectator, with hands uplifted as he gazes in adoration. This exceptionally beautiful and masterly design is said to have been reproduced on a considerably larger scale for a window of the church of St. Theodore in Little Basel. A fragment of the glass, containing the Madonna’s head, is preserved in the Historical Museum in Basel.
Vol. I., Plate 45.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH A KNEELING DONOR
Design for painted glass
Basel Gallery
By far the most important of Holbein’s designs for glass windows are those forming the series of ten subjects from the “Passion of Christ,” in the Basel Gallery, which in dramatic power and fertility of invention surpass all his earlier treatments of this great subject. The range over which the series extends is a shorter one than in the painted altar-piece in eight scenes representing the same subject. The latter begins with the “Mount of Olives” and ends with the “Entombment,” whereas the glass designs start with “Christ before Caiaphas” and conclude with the “Crucifixion,” so that the part of the story which is represented is told with greater detail. In most cases the designs are arranged in pairs, with the architectural framework in close though not exact correspondence, and similarly shaped and decorated spaces left at the bottom for the inclusion of the appropriate scriptural text. Evidently in each of the windows of the church for which they were designed pairs of subjects were to be placed side by side. Two of the scenes, however, seem to be single designs, the “Mocking” (No. 3), and the “Ecce Homo” (No. 6), in which the setting corresponds with none of the other drawings; while in the two last of the series, the “Nailing to the Cross” and the “Crucifixion,” the architectural framework only agrees in its general lines, though the designs evidently form a pair. Apparently, therefore, the series was made for a range of six windows, four of them with double and two with single divisions. According to Dr. Ganz, the series was begun, but not completed, by Holbein in 1523, his journey to the south of France intervening. On his return to Basel he resumed the work, which was probably finished by the end of the same year or early in 1524. He sees differences, more particularly in the architecture, in certain of the drawings, such as the “Mocking,” which suggest that the artist had gained fresh ideas from his study of the buildings in the towns through which he passed on his way to Montpellier, where he went to deliver the portrait of Erasmus to Bonifacius Amerbach.
THE “PASSION OF CHRIST” SERIES
The series opens with “Christ before Caiaphas” (Pl. [46] (1)).[[335]] The high priest is seen from the side, seated upon a throne raised on steps within a richly-decorated hall, through the entrance to which the soldiers escorting Christ are crowding. Christ stands below his judge, his hands bound, and his sorrowful face turned towards one of the soldiers, who, with uplifted fist, is about to strike him. The second scene, that of the “Scourging” (Pl. [46] (2)),[[336]] is enacted in another part of the same building, showing the same low, flattened arches, and a corresponding pillar on the right with Renaissance carving in flat relief and inlaid marble. Christ, his head drooping on his shoulder, an almost nude figure, is bound to a broad circular column with a decorated top. In the action of the three soldiers who are plying their whips and scourges there is little of that exaggerated vehemence of action which is to be seen in Holbein’s earlier versions of this subject, while in both this and the succeeding pictures the type of face is less repulsive, and greater reticence is shown in the display of brutality. In most cases the faces of the soldiers are turned away from the spectator, or half hidden by their action, or only seen in profile. The distortion and caricature have disappeared, and his types have become natural ones, taken from the daily life around him. The costume in few instances only is that of Holbein’s time, and the soldiers wear what is intended to be the antique Roman dress, such as had become familiar to him through Mantegna’s designs. Near Christ, in “The Scourging,” a little behind the central group, stands a bearded man in the gown and hood of a monk, resting on a stick, as though superintending the punishment, and waiting for a confession; and in the background a gallery runs across the building under the arches, from which a second hooded figure is looking down on the scene.