With these portraits of Erasmus and some of his most intimate friends may be placed Holbein’s own portrait of himself (Frontispiece), the very exquisite drawing in the Basel Gallery (No. 320),[[429]] in which he is represented almost full face, wearing a large red hat, a brown-grey cloak or overcoat with bands of black velvet, and a white shirt tied with strings at the neck. He is beardless, with short dark-brown hair, and brown eyes. The study is on paper, and is drawn in Indian ink and coloured chalks, and washed with water-colour which has faded in parts. This drawing, like the portrait of Holbein’s wife and children, and the one of Von Rüdiswiler of Lucerne by Ambrosius Holbein, has been at some time cut out round the outlines, and afterwards mounted on a greyish paper, which produces the slight effect of hardness which must certainly have been missing in its untouched state.[[430]] In 1907 the plain blue background was carefully renewed from an old example.
Some writers have held that it is not absolutely certain that this drawing really represents the painter. In the Amerbach inventory of 1586 it is described as, “Item ein tafelen gehort darin ein conterfehung Holbeins mit trocken farben (a counterfeit of Holbein in dry colours, i.e. crayons), so im grossen kasten vnder Holbeins kunst ligt”; and in the later inventories it is described in much the same way. Knackfuss, among others, says that from these words it is not positively to be concluded that the “counterfeit” was of Holbein himself. There can be little doubt, however, that Amerbach intended to describe it as a portrait of Holbein by himself; if it had been a drawing of some unknown sitter he would have so described it. As far back as 1676 it was published by Patin in his edition of the Praise of Folly as Holbein’s portrait from his own hand. It bears, too, a strong likeness to the portraits of Holbein as a boy by the elder Hans, both in the “St. Paul” picture and in the drawing of 1511 of the two brothers at Berlin. There is the same massive head, with its fine forehead, breadth of cheek-bones, strong chin, and firm mouth. It has great resemblance, too, when due allowance has been made for the passing of twenty years or so, to the miniature portraits of himself which he painted at the end of his life. It may be accepted, indeed, without reservation as a genuine portrait of Holbein, of about the date 1523-5, when he was some twenty-six years old.[[431]] As a portrait it is a magnificent study. The face is a strong one, of a somewhat serious cast, but with a suggestion of humour about the finely shaped mobile mouth and in the clear brown eyes. The broadly built head with its high forehead indicates strength of character and intellectual capacity, and there is a quiet dignity and a sense of power in the whole countenance and in the carriage of the youthful figure, which one would expect to find in the likeness of a painter possessed, as Holbein was, of such brilliant technical abilities and so wonderful a creative genius.[[432]]
CHAPTER IX
DESIGNS FOR BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
Holbein’s work for the Basel publishers—Imperfection of the cutting of his earlier book illustrations—His connection with Hans Lützelburger—His first title-page—More’s Utopia—the Table of Cebes—Luther’s translation of the New Testament—Title-page to the quarto edition—Work for Luther’s translation of the Old Testament—“The Sale of Indulgences”—“Christ the True Light”—Woodcuts representing incidents of common life, dancing, merry-making, &c.—Initial letters and alphabets—Trade-marks and devices for printers.
THROUGHOUT the whole period of his first residence in Basel a considerable part of Holbein’s time was occupied with the production of designs for book illustrations, such as title-pages, head and tail-pieces, ornamental borders, initial letters, and printers’ marks. Including the “Dance of Death” and Old Testament illustrations, and the various alphabets of his designing, Woltmann enumerates more than three hundred woodcuts or metal engravings, large or small, for which Holbein made the drawings. Much of his work of this kind was done for Froben, but he was also frequently employed by Adam Petri, Thomas Wolff, and other printers and publishers.
The old contention that Holbein himself cut the blocks bearing his own designs, which at one time produced much acrimonious dispute and a voluminous literature, has long since been abandoned, and there is absolutely nothing to be said in its favour. He must, however, have had a thorough working knowledge of the technical side of woodengraving, and of the limits within which it was necessary to confine his art; and within those limits he produced the most splendid results.
A number of his earlier designs were not cut in wood, but in metal. The method was similar to that of wood-cutting, the drawing being left in relief, as on the wood block, a process exactly opposite to copperplate engraving, in which the lines to be reproduced are incised. Several of his title-pages and ornaments from metal blocks bear the initials I.F. upon them, and it was at one time considered that they were probably the work of Froben himself,[[433]] who is described more than once as “chalcographer,” or a worker in metal. The term, however, may mean only a designer and caster of type, which was a trade Froben followed side by side with that of a publisher. The I.F. of these engravings was not Froben, but Jakob Faber, who was the best of the cutters in metal who worked after Holbein. Froben, no doubt, employed a permanent staff of engravers, both for his own publications and also for the sale of blocks and plates to other publishers. Faber was possibly one of those who found more or less regular employment in his service, and another was the engraver with the signature “C.V.,” who engraved the eight metal cuts in illustration of the Lord’s Prayer, which appeared about 1523, badly printed, in two rare editions of the Precatio Dominica of Erasmus, copies of which are included in the William Mitchell Collection in the British Museum. The proofs in the Basel Gallery have German text; the Mitchell set, with a clause of the Paternoster in French printed at the top of each cut, is a unique state, and the impressions are very early and sharp. The same “C.V.” engraved in metal the Evangelists in the Greek Testaments of 1524 and 1540.
One of the finest of Faber’s metal-cuts is the folio title-page issued by Cratander in 1525, representing Christ before God the Father, surrounded by a great crowd of boy-angels, in the lunette at the top, the symbols of the four Evangelists in niches shown in perspective at the sides, and the Apostles at the foot. This title-page is made up of four separate plates, each of which bears the initials “I.F.”[[434]] Quite recently (1913) the British Museum has received from the National Art-Collections Fund a rare Book of Hours, printed at Lyon in 1548, containing fourteen metal-cuts by Faber after Holbein’s designs.