The Darmstadt picture had certainly suffered from retouching in many places, but in 1887 it underwent a careful cleaning at the hands of Hauser of Munich, by means of which the dirt and the spurious paint were removed. It was then found to be in a very perfect state of preservation, with the original splendour of its colour almost undimmed, and the details as fine and as clear as when Holbein first painted them. The differences between the two pictures are many, but in colour, in expression, and in technical achievement the one at Darmstadt is far superior. The copyist who produced the Dresden picture has apparently attempted to improve upon the original, by beautifying the face of the Madonna, which has lost much of its character in the process, and giving a more graceful form to the rather thickset, stumpy figure of the original, so characteristic of Holbein. The proportions of the background have been also changed, with the same idea of improvement. The copyist appears to have thought that the top of the semicircular niche pressed too closely upon the Virgin’s head, and he accordingly raised it, thus relieving what he considered to be a cramped position; whereas in Holbein’s original arrangement, in which the diameter of the semicircle cuts across the shoulders of the figure, the spacing is more effective than in the copy, in which the line passes through the Virgin’s neck. In the same way the pilasters over the kneeling figures on either side have been raised well above the heads, so that the upper parts of the columns become visible. In richness and harmony of colour the Darmstadt version is far finer. In the Dresden copy the Virgin’s dress is green, which proves that it was painted at some time considerably later than the original, when the blue of the latter had taken on a greenish tint from the discoloration of the varnish. Again, the extraordinary delicacy and precision of the draughtsmanship of all the details of dress is far more marked in the original work, in which, too, there is much greater expression and animation in the faces.
HISTORY OF THE DARMSTADT PICTURE
The history of the Darmstadt picture can be traced, with few breaks, from the day it was painted. On the death of Dorothea Meyer about 1549 it passed into the possession of her daughter Anna and the latter’s husband, Nikolaus Irmi, or Irmy (1507-52). Anna Irmi, who married, after Irmi’s death, Wilhelm Hebdenring, and died a widow in 1558, left it to her daughter Rosa or Rosina, who, in 1576, married, as his third wife, Remigius Faesch, burgomaster of Basel. Rosa died about 1606, and shortly afterwards Faesch sold the picture for one hundred golden crowns (coronatos aureos solares) to a certain Lucas Iselin. This information is contained in a Latin manuscript in the Basel Library, which was written about the middle of the seventeenth century by a second Remigius Faesch, grandson of the burgomaster. He was a doctor of laws, and a collector of pictures, and his manuscript bears the title, “Humanæ Industriæ Monumenta.” The thirty-fifth folio is concerned with Holbein, and from it the history of the picture may be taken a step farther. Faesch says: “In the year 163-, the above-named painter, Le Blond, bought here of the widow and heirs of Lucas Iselin, of St. Martin’s, a painting on wood, about three Basel ells in size, the height and width being the same; in which were represented the foresaid Burgomaster Jakob Meier, together with his sons on the right side, and on the opposite side his wife with the daughters, all painted from life, kneeling before the altar. I possess copies of a son and a daughter, painted in Belgium from the picture itself by Joh. Ludi. Le Blond paid for the picture 1000 imperials, and sold it afterwards for three times as much to Maria de’ Medici, Queen Dowager of France, mother of King Louis XIII, while she was residing in Belgium, where she died. Whither it afterwards went, is uncertain.” A marginal note, added by Faesch, probably at a later date, further states: “This panel belonged to my grandfather, the Burgomaster Remigius Faesch, from whom Lucas Iselin gained possession of it, ostensibly for the ambassador of the King of France, and paid 100 gold crowns for it about the year 1606.”[[501]]
Lucas Iselin died in 1626, and his heirs appear to have sold the picture some years afterwards to Michel Le Blond, the German engraver, who lived for the greater part of his life in Amsterdam, where he was occupied in providing engraved plates of ornaments for the use of jewellers, and was also a picture collector and dealer. He acted as agent to the Court of Sweden at Amsterdam, and in 1625 he negotiated for the Duke of Buckingham the purchase of a large collection of works of art from Rubens. He was a friend of Sandrart, Holbein’s biographer, and travelled with him in Italy.
Sandrart, in his Life of Holbein, continues the history of the picture, and in speaking of Le Blond’s collection, says: “This gentleman has long ago” (lang vorher)—he refers to some time before he, Sandrart, was in Amsterdam, about 1640-45—“sold to the bookkeeper (or banker) Johann Lössert, at his urgent request for the sum of 3000 gulden, a standing figure of the Virgin painted on a panel, holding her little Child in her arms, and under her is a carpet on which some figures are kneeling before her, taken from life.”[[502]] Sandrart’s description shows that the picture in question was undoubtedly the Meyer Madonna, and this is confirmed by Patin’s account. The latter had access to the Faesch manuscript, and speaks of it as “A standing Mary on a panel with the Child on her arm, under her a carpet on which some figures are kneeling before her, painted from the life.”
HISTORY OF THE DARMSTADT PICTURE
Sandrart’s story indicates that Faesch must have been wrong in stating that Le Blond sold the picture to Maria de’ Medici, then in exile in Holland; she appears to have been contented with a copy of it. Sandrart himself took sketches of some of the figures, and others were made, according to Faesch, by Joh. Ludi. This was Johannes Lüdin, a pupil of Sarburgh, who has been confused by earlier writers with Giovanni da Lodi, an obscure painter whose work is to be found in several churches in Lodi. Wornum thought that Giovanni might have been the author of the Dresden copy of the picture,[[503]] but later researches have shown this to be a mistake. Quite recently (1911), Dr. E. Major has identified it as a copy made for Queen Maria de’ Medici by Bartholomäus Sarburgh, a portrait-painter who, in 1634, was living at the Hague, which was about the time the picture went to Holland. Sarburgh, who was born about 1590, worked in Basel and in Berne, and may have known the painting in his youth. It is extremely probable, in Dr. Major’s opinion, that the Dresden example is identical with the copy known to have been in the possession of the French Queen.[[504]] There are numerous copies of Holbein’s works by Sarburgh still in Basel, and several portraits by him in the Picture Gallery of that city.
It has also been suggested that Faesch was mistaken in saying that Le Blond bought the picture from Iselin’s widow in Basel, and that in reality he obtained it from Iselin himself at some earlier date; for in 1621 there was an important example of Holbein’s work in Amsterdam which the Earl of Arundel was anxious to obtain. Sir Dudley Carleton, writing to the Earl from the Hague, 22nd June 1621, says: “Having wayted lately on ye K. and Q. of Bohemia to Amsterdam, I there saw ye picture of Holben’s yor Lp. desires; but cannot yet obtayne it, though my indeavours wayte on it, as they still shall doe.”[[505]] Sir Dudley, however, gives no description of the picture, which he was unable to get for the Earl, so that it is impossible to say more than that there is some probability that it may have been the Meyer Madonna.
Sandrart, who was a personal friend of Le Blond, is no doubt correct when he says that the latter sold it direct to the banker Johann Lössert; and it remained in the possession of that family for some seventy or eighty years. It next appears in a sale of the pictures of Jacob Cromhout and Jasper Loskart, held at Amsterdam on the 7th and 8th May 1709, the latter evidently a descendant of Johann Lössert. According to the catalogue, both owners were deceased, and the greater number of the pictures seem to have belonged to Cromhout, the catalogue-heading concluding with the words, “and some other fine pictures coming from the cabinet of the deceased Herr Jasper Loskart.”[[506]] It is possible that the two owners were relations, or partners in business, as the coat of arms of the Cromhouts is on the old frame of the Darmstadt panel, indicating that at some time or other the picture had been transferred from the one family to the other.[[507]] The picture was No. 24 in the sale, and was described as, “A capital piece, with two doors, representing Mary with Jesus on her arm, with various kneeling figures from life, by Hans Holbeen—fl. 2000”; just double the price paid for a large altar-piece by Rubens in the same sale, and equal to about £160 in modern money, a large price for a picture in those days. It will be seen that in 1709 it still had wings, which have since disappeared.
For more than one hundred years after the Cromhout sale all traces of the picture are missing, though it appears to have been in England for at least a part of the time, for on the back is written in English: “No. 82, Holy Family, Portraits, A.D.,” the latter initials indicating that when here it was attributed to Dürer. On the old seventeenth-century frame there are, in addition to the Cromhout coat of arms, the armorial bearings of a member of the Von Warberge family and his wife, apparently indicating yet another ownership. It reappeared in 1822, when it was purchased by Prince William of Prussia from the Parisian picture-dealer Delahante, through the latter’s brother-in-law, Spontini, at that time royal musical director in Berlin, at a cost of 2500 or 2800 thalers—about £420. On the death of the Prince its purchase for the Berlin Museum was urged by Dr. Waagen, but the authorities were not willing to consider it. On the division of the Prince’s property, it was assigned to his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who married Prince Charles of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1836; and from that day the picture has remained in the private apartments of the old palace.