And the student of Holbein's art can but feel that Ruskin has here touched upon a characteristic of the painter's peculiar power in every phase of it;—the power to be Cæsar within himself; to say to his hand, "thus far," to say to his fancy, "no farther." Those who have come to know Holbein something more than superficially, or as a mere maker of portraits, will smile at the dictum of some very recent "authority" which pronounces him wanting in imagination; or at the hasty conclusion that what he would not, that he could not.
He has given us, for instance, no animal paintings or landscapes pure and simple, or, at least, none such have come down to us. And yet what gems of landscape he has touched into his backgrounds here and there! And what drawings of animal life he made! There are two, for instance, in the Basel Museum which could not be surpassed; studies in silver-point and water-colours of lambs and a bat outstretched. No reproduction could give the exquisite texture of the bat's wings, the wandering red veins, the almost diaphanous membrane, the furry body,—a miracle of patience and softness. It is all purest Nature. Like Topsy one can but "'spec' it growed" rather than was created.
And they are not only beautiful in themselves but full of living meanings. Many an hour the young painter enjoyed while he made such studies as his lambs on the pleasant slopes about Basel; the mountains scalloping the horizon, and all the sweet fresh winds vocal with tinkling bells or the chant of the deep-throated Rhine. Many of "the long, long thoughts" of youth,—those thoughts that ring like happy bells or sweep like rushing rivers, kept him company as he laid these delicate strokes and washes that seem to exhale the very breath of morning across four hundred years.
In the next year after painting the portraits of Meyer and his wife there is a sudden break in the painter's story which has always puzzled his biographers. After such a brilliant start in Basel it is perplexing to find the young man, instead of proceeding to join the Painters' Guild and take the necessary citizenship, suddenly turn his back on all these encouragements and leave the town for a long absence and remote journeys. As will be seen when we come to consider the story of Holbein's married life, however, I have a theory that the influence which sent him south in such an unexpected fashion was apart from professional affairs.
Whether this is a good shot or no, certain it is that he did now go far south,—as distances were in those days; and that, paying his way as he went by his brush, he went first to Lucerne, where the evidence goes to show that he apparently thought of settling instead of at Basel,—and then on beyond it. And it seems highly probable that at this time he pushed on over the Alps and made his way into Italy,—already the Mecca of every artist.
Here he could not now, in 1517, have hoped to see either Bramante or Leonardo da Vinci in person. The former had died at Rome two years before; but, without getting even as far as Pavia, Milan could show some splendid monuments to his sojourn within her walls; characteristic examples of that architecture of the closing fifteenth century which Holbein loved as Bramante himself. Leonardo was now in France; but in the refectory of the Santa Maria Monastery was his immortal, though, alas! not imperishable, masterpiece—"The Last Supper." Time had not yet taught Leonardo, much less Holbein, the fleeting nature of mural oil-painting; the only so-called "fresco" painting which the latter ever attempted, so far as is known. But the great Supper was still glowing in all the splendour of its original painting, and would impress itself indelibly on an eye such as Holbein's. In more than one cathedral, too, as he wandered in such a holiday, he would have noted how Mantegna had made its architecture the background for his own individual genius.
At any rate each of these, somehow and somewhere, set its own seal upon the reverent heart of Holbein at about this time. Whether through their original works or copies of them,—already familiar to Augsburg as well as Lucerne,—the lad sat humbly at the feet of both Leonardo and Mantegna. By the first, beside many a loftier lesson, he was confirmed and strengthened in his native respect for accurate studies of the living world around him. From the second he learned a still deeper scorn of "pretty" art. Yet though he sat at their feet, it was as no servile disciple. He would fain be taught by them; fain follow them in all humility and frankness. But it was in order to expand his own powers, not to surrender them; to speak his own thoughts the better, not theirs, nor another's.
And, in any event, on such a journey Lucerne must come first. And that he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown by his having joined in this year 1517, the Guild of St. Luke, the Painters' Guild of Lucerne, then but newly organised. "Master Hans Holbein has given one Gulden," reads the old entry. Two other items of this visit give us glimpses of its flesh-and-blood realities, perhaps of its unrest. The first, that he also joined a local company of Archers, the Militia of his day, seems to bring his living footfall very close. A resonant, manly, wholesome footfall it is, too! This broad-shouldered young fellow is as ready to draw a good stout bow among mountain-marksmen as a lamb among its daffodils. The second item makes it still clearer that he had other elements as well as the pastoral in his blood. On the 10th of December he got himself fined for his share in a street-scrimmage, where he would seem to have decidedly preferred the livelier to the "better part" of valour.
And then he would appear to have shaken the dust, or more likely the snows, of Lucerne off his feet for the road to Italy, if not for Italy itself. Whatever his objective, he got, at any rate, well on toward the Pass of the St. Gothard. The scanty clues of such works as have remained on record prove that he reached Altdorf. But there the actual trail is altogether lost. If he spent the entire interval brush in hand, or if—as I believe—he treated himself to a bit of a holiday beyond the Alps, can be but a guess in the dark.
By this time the New Year of 1518, then falling in March, could not have been far off, before or behind him. And in 1518 Holbein executed the commission which must have been the envy of every local artist. Jacob von Hertenstein, Burgomaster of Lucerne, had now got his fine new house ready for decoration; and it was to Holbein that he gave the splendid commission to decorate it to his fancy,—the interior as well as the façade.