In all, there would seem to have been six large pictures or set pieces; but two were not done until years later. One wall being too broken up by windows to be suitable, there remained three,—of which "the back wall" adjoining Meyer's house was not touched at this time. Ostensibly the reason was want of funds; but as a matter of fact the Protestant party (to anticipate this name), which grew strong enough to unseat Meyer before the year was out, was at this time indifferent to art when not positively inimical to it.

Whether treating a façade or an interior it was Holbein's custom to make a flat wall-space assume the most solid-looking forms of Renaissance architecture. Iselin once said of a façade of Holbein's, that there was a dog painted on it so naturally that the dogs in the street would run up and bark at it. And so astounding was the realism with which he threw out balconies, and added windows, cornices, and statues, and the richest carvings, pillars, arches, and vistas of every sort, that no eye could credit them with illusion. Horses neighed in the courtyards, flowers bloomed in the gardens, dogs leaped beside master or mistress, and children played in the spacious balconies, or moved to and fro between the splendid marble pillars and the distant wall. To study the copies that remain of such works is to be astounded by their feats of perspective.

Inside would be kindred illusions. Large pictures would seem to be actually taking place without, and beheld through beautifully carved archways or windows; while the apparent walls would have niches filled with superb marble statues and the ceiling be supported by pillars, behind which people walked and talked or leaned out to watch the chief scenes.

And so it was with the Council Chamber. But nothing now remains of these works except fragments and a few drawings for the principal features. So far as can be judged, each wall had two large scenes; the four pictures of this period being chosen from the heroic legends of the Gesta Romanorum; the two painted later, from the Old Testament.

But while these large works were going forward Holbein was busy with many others; private commissions for Froben, occasionally for other printers, and for altar-pieces or portraits. All through his life his industry and accomplishment left him small time for leisure or the dissipations of leisure. Nor is there any year of his life when his work does not attest a clear eye and a firm hand. These things are their own certificate of conduct; at any rate, of "worldly" conduct.

In 1522 occurred two important events in his life. His first child, the son he called Philip, was born; and he painted an altar-piece which is in some respects the most beautiful of his extant works. The latter—now in the Solothurn Museum, and therefore called the "Solothurn Madonna" ([Plate 12])—has had one of the most extraordinary histories to be found in the records of art.

PLATE 12.
THE SOLOTHURN, OR ZETTER'SCHE, MADONNA
Oils. Solothurn Museum
Click to [ENLARGE]

The background of this picture,—a massive arch of grey sandstone supported by iron stanchions,—was evidently designed to suit the surrounding architecture of some grey-walled ancient structure. On a daïs covered with a green carpet, patterned in white and red and emblazoned with the arms of the donor and his wife, sits the lovely Madonna with the Child held freely yet firmly in two of the most exquisite hands which even Holbein ever painted. Her dress is a rich rose-red; her symbolical mantle of universal Motherhood, or "Grace," is a most beautiful ultramarine, loaded in the shadows and like a sapphire in its lights. The flowing gold of her hair shimmers under its filmy veil, and the jewels in her gold crown flash below the great white pearls that tip its points. Where the sky-background approaches Mother and Child, its azure tone is lost in a pure effulgence of light; as if the very ether were suffused with the sense of the Divine.

The Child is drawn and painted superbly. The carnations are exquisite; the gravity of infancy is not exaggerated, yet fittingly enforces the gesture of benediction. The left hand is turned outward in a movement so peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation and nature. The little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled sole a bit of inimitable painting. But perhaps most wonderful of all is the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the Child is the centre of interest as well as of the picture. How it is so, is Holbein's own secret.