During the next seven or eight years Holbein designed a number of book illustrations for Froben, Adam Petri, Thomas Wolff, and other printers. He was ready, however, to turn his hand to anything. He painted a table with an amusing allegory of St. Nobody for the wedding of Hans Bär in Basle on June 24, 1515, and in the same year supplied a schoolmaster with a sign-board to hang outside his house.
It is uncertain when Holbein first became acquainted with the great scholar of Antwerp, Desiderius Erasmus, who had come to Basle in 1513 for the purpose of superintending the publishing of his books, nor is it easy to say to what degree of intimacy the artist was admitted by this brilliant humanist. Erasmus had the greatest admiration for his powers as an artist, and served him whenever he could, both by employing him himself and recommending him to others. During Holbein’s first year in Basle, Erasmus had published through Froben his famous and witty satire, “The Praise of Folly,” and the artist made a number of drawings on the margins of a copy of this book, illustrating passages in the text. He seems to have done them at the suggestion of another distinguished man of letters, Oswald Molitor, of Lucerne, at that time employed by Froben, who selected the passages to be illustrated; and a note in his handwriting says that they were finished on December 29, 1515, and that Erasmus was greatly entertained by them. The original book is now in the Basle Museum.
Holbein soon began to give proof of his wonderful abilities as a portrait painter. One of the first commissions he received was in 1516, from Jacob Meyer, Burgomaster of Basle, whom he painted, together with his young second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser, a double portrait in one frame (Basle Museum). The burgomaster was pleased with the result, and remained the artist’s constant good friend, procuring important public commissions for him, as well as making further private use of his talents.
In 1517 he left Basle for Lucerne, where, according to Dr. von Liebenau, his father was then residing. He was made a member of the recently-founded Painters’ Guild of St. Luke, and also joined a local company of archers. On December 10, 1517, he was in trouble with the magistrates, being fined for taking part in some street brawl, after which he appears to have left Lucerne for a time. He can be traced as far south as Altdorf by the remains of a few pictures. If he ever visited Italy it would be at this period. One or two writers hold that he made some such journey, and point to several paintings in the Basle Museum as proof that he must have had personal acquaintance with certain achievements of Leonardo and his school, which he could only have seen in Italy; but the influence of Mantegna and Da Vinci, which, though plainly detected in his early work, is by no means a predominant one, may be easily accounted for through the numerous Italian engravings then circulating throughout Europe, without any actual visit to Lombardy on the part of the artist. He was back in Lucerne in 1518, busily engaged upon the decoration of the house of the magistrate, Jacob von Hertenstein, which he covered with frescoes both inside and out. The remains of this great work were destroyed in 1824, when the house was demolished for street improvements, but not before the chief designs had been hastily copied by Schwegher, Ulrich von Eschenbach, and other Lucerne artists. This was by far the most important undertaking upon which Holbein had as yet been engaged, and it was the first of a splendid series of decorative works of which, unhappily, nothing remains but their fame and a few slight preliminary sketches or indifferent copies. No one north of the Alps came near to him in the fertility of design and beauty of execution and of colour displayed by him in this adaptation of a favourite method of Italian decoration which became popular in the sixteenth century in certain parts of Germany and Switzerland.
Holbein was back in Basle in 1519. He joined the Painters’ Guild on September 25, and on July 3 in the following year paid his fees as a burgher of the city. One of the first portraits he now undertook was that of Bonifacius Amerbach, a brilliant young scholar and intimate friend of Erasmus and other learned men. Amerbach had the greatest admiration for Holbein’s genius, and missed no occasion of acquiring any of his works, and it is owing to his taste and liberal purse that so fine a collection of the painter’s productions can be studied to-day in the Basle Museum.
The fame of Hertenstein’s painted house had spread to Basle, and Holbein was soon busy over similar undertakings in the town of his adoption, of which the most celebrated was The House of the Dance. He also produced many designs for stained-glass windows, as well as a number of sketches for costumes and patterns for goldsmiths and metal-workers. His most important commission at this time, however, was the decoration of the interior of the new Town Hall with wall-paintings, showing that, although only twenty-four, he was already considered to be the chief artist in Basle. He began this work in June, 1521, and by November, 1522, had covered three of the walls with subjects taken from ancient history. These were probably selected for him, and were intended as examples of that exercise of stern justice which should characterize the actions and decisions of all rulers. These great decorative paintings have long since perished through damp and neglect, and only a few fragments remain in the Basle Museum. When he had finished three of the walls, he was of opinion that he had earned the full amount voted by the Town Council for the completion of the whole chamber. The Council saw the justice of this, but, cautious of their expenditure of the public funds, like many Councils of the present day, they resolved to “let the back wall alone until further notice.”
In spite of these large decorative undertakings, Holbein found time to paint a number of sacred pictures, among the earlier ones being a Passion series, coarsely and hastily painted on canvas; a Last Supper, reminding one of more famous examples by Leonardo and Luini; and others which are described later on (see p. 29). His two greatest sacred pictures, which are worthy to stand by the side of the finest canvases of the Italians, are the Madonna and Saints, at Solothurn, painted in 1522, and the famous Meyer Madonna, at Darmstadt, (see illustration, and p. 44). The latter was executed about 1526 for the former burgomaster, Jacob Meyer.
Among other works of this period of the artist’s career are two small portraits (Basle Museum), representing a certain Dorothea Offenburg, a lady of no great repute in her day, as Venus with Cupid, and again as Lais Corinthiaca. These are two of the pictures to which certain critics point as showing so strongly the influence of the Milanese school as to suggest a personal visit to Italy.
Holbein’s fame as an illustrator largely depends upon his celebrated Dance of Death woodcuts, and his illustrations to the New Testament. Both series were commissioned by the brothers Trechsel, printers, of Lyons, about 1523, the designs from the pen of Holbein, and the blocks cut by Hans Lützelburger, the one engraver of the period who was fitted to reproduce Holbein’s work in its full delicacy and beauty. Both artist and woodcutter seem to have been occupied with the commission until 1526, in which year Lützelburger died, and although Holbein had completed his part, the work stopped short for want of a competent engraver. Neither series was published until 1538, when Holbein was at his zenith as a portrait painter in England. The Dance of Death has been popularized by many reprints and reproductions; indeed, these satires on the uncertainty of life, homilies in miniature, drawn with the most surprising power and artistic beauty within the smallest limits, soon became famous throughout Europe.