PORTRAITS OF ERASMUS
The first portraits of Erasmus by Holbein to which a date can be given are the Longford Castle example and the profile likeness in the Louvre, both of which were painted in 1523, probably towards the end of that year, when the artist was about twenty-six; and it is generally agreed that these are the two which were sent to England by Erasmus in 1524. In a letter to his friend Wilibald Pirkheimer at Nuremberg, dated June 3rd of that year, Erasmus says: “Only recently I have again sent two portraits of me to England, painted by a not unskilful artist. He has also taken a portrait of me to France.” That the painter to whom Erasmus refers was Holbein is proved by a passage in Beatus Rhenanus’ Emendations of Pliny, published by Froben in March 1526, and written in the previous year. In speaking of the most celebrated German painters of the day, he mentions Dürer in Nuremberg, Hans Baldung in Strasburg, and Lucas Cranach in Saxony, and concludes with Hans Holbein in Switzerland, “born in Augsburg, but for a long time a burgher of Basel, who last year painted, most successfully and finely, two portraits of our Erasmus of Rotterdam, which he afterwards sent into England.”[[380]] One of the two sent to England was a present to William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose yearly pension to Erasmus was increased about this time. The latter wrote to Warham on September 4, 1524: “I hope that the portrait painted of me, which I sent to you, has reached you, so that you may have somewhat of Erasmus should God call me hence.” It is not known for whom the second portrait was intended. No reference to it is to be found in the numerous letters despatched to England by Erasmus in that year, addressed, among others, to Fisher, Tunstall, Wolsey, and the King himself. It was not, apparently, meant for Sir Thomas More, for he already possessed the portrait of his friend by Metsys, and it is not very probable that Erasmus would send him a second. Nor does More speak of it in his letters to Basel, although he is certain to have done so had he received so valuable a gift, for he was lavish in his praise and his thanks for the Metsys portrait in 1517. It has been generally supposed that the well-known letter from More to Erasmus, in which he speaks of Holbein as a wonderful artist, affords proof that Sir Thomas had seen one or both of these two portraits, and that it was of them he was speaking when he praised the painter’s skill. The date of this letter is given as December 18, 1525, in the published works of Erasmus, but Herman Grimm showed that it was incorrect, and altered the year-date to 1524, in which Woltmann followed him. This, however, is also an error. The real date of the letter is 1526, as is proved by the literary work of Erasmus mentioned in it; and it has, therefore, nothing to do with the two portraits sent over in 1524, but was written shortly after Holbein’s arrival in London, when More had made his personal acquaintance.[[381]]
It is impossible to say which of the two portraits of 1523 is the earlier in date. No doubt the preliminary drawings for both were made in the little room or study in which the scholar sat daily at work upon his own writings, or supervising the publication and correcting the proofs of other volumes issued by Froben, for whom he was then acting as a kind of editor-in-chief. In the Longford Castle example (Pl. [54])[[382]] Holbein has shown his sitter to the waist, turned to the left, the face seen in three-quarters. He is wearing his invariable dress of black lined with sable, and over it a dark cloak trimmed with black fur, and a black doctor’s cap over his grey hair. He gazes in front of him, with a half-smile in his blue eyes and on his fine, sensitive mouth. His hands rest on a red book placed on the table before him, on the gilt edges of which is inscribed, partly in Greek and partly in Latin characters, “ἩΡΑΚΛΕΙΟΙ ΠΟΝΟΙ ERASMI ROTERO—” (The Herculean labours of Erasmus of Rotterdam)—the end of the last word being hidden by the sable cuff of the cloak. The background shows on the left a flat, richly-ornamented pillar and capital of Renaissance design, and on the right a green curtain hung from a rod by rings, partly drawn aside, and revealing a shelf on which are three books and a glass water-bottle. On the cover of the book which leans against the latter is the date “MDXXIII.,” and on the edge of the same volume is a damaged couplet in Latin, now partly defaced, which J. Mähly, after supplying several missing words, read as follows:—
“Ille ego Joannes Holbein, en, non facile ullus.
Tam mihi mimus erit quam mihi momus erat.”[[383]]
These lines, no doubt, were composed by Erasmus himself in praise of the artist. Traces of further inscriptions, now undecipherable, are to be seen on the edges of the other books. This work shows an extraordinary advance in Holbein’s powers as a portrait-painter when compared with even so fine a work as the “Bonifacius Amerbach,” painted four years earlier. The modelling of both head and hands is searching in its truth, and he rarely accomplished anything more perfect in the subtlety of its delineation of character, and in a realism without exaggeration or hardness of detail. We see the “little old man,” as Dürer described him when he met him in Brussels some years earlier, just as he was in reality, the marks of age on his strongly-lined face, and about the eyes something of the tired look of the scholar and bookman, but the face still stamped with mental energy, and a calm, tolerant, and dignified outlook on life. A faint smile lights up his features, as though satisfied both with his own accomplished work and with the world in which he was living. For penetrating insight, indeed, this portrait is almost unsurpassed. It shows that side of the character of Erasmus which is displayed in his familiar letters to friends, in his Praise of Folly, and his Colloquies, a gentle, genial sense of humour which sweetened his intercourse with his fellows.[[384]] A sheet in the Print Room of the Louvre contains a slight, almost obliterated, study for the head in this picture, but full face, and a masterly drawing for the right hand, full of character;[[385]] a second contains two studies of the left hand, and one of the right hand holding the pen in the Louvre portrait (Pl. [55]).[[386]] In the catalogue of the Meade sale it was stated that the picture had been at one time in the Arundel Collection.[[387]]
Vol. I., Plate 54.
ERASMUS
1523
From the picture in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle
THE LONGFORD CASTLE “ERASMUS”