PLATE 13.
UNNAMED PORTRAIT-STUDY: NOT CATALOGUED AS HOLBEIN'S
Silver-point and Indian-ink. Louvre Collection
Believed by the writer to be Holbein's drawing of his wife before her
first marriage, and the model for the Solothurn Madonna
Click to [ENLARGE]

That this is a portrait of Holbein's wife any careful comparison with her portrait at Basel must establish. Feature for feature, allowing for the changes of sufficient years, the two faces are one and the same. The very line of the shoulder, setting of the head, and even the outline of the fashion in which the low dress is cut, is alike in both. And equally unmistakable is the relation between this Louvre drawing and the Madonna of Solothurn.

Yet I am unable to accept Woltmann's theory that the drawing was made in 1522 "for" the Virgin. He assumes that the lettering which borders the bodice in this drawing—ALS. IN. ERN. ALS. IN....—and the braids in which the hair is worn are simply some "fancy" dress. But surely if ever hair bore the stamp of unstudied, even ugly custom, it does so here. Then, too, Woltmann himself, as are all who adopt this explanation, is unable to reconcile the oldest age which can be assigned to this sitter with the youngest that can be assumed for the Basel painting of 1529 upon a hypothesis of only seven years' interval. Temperament and trouble can do much in seven years; but not so much as this. I say temperament advisedly; because all the evidence of Holbein's life substantiates the assertion of Van Mander, who had it from Holbein's own circle of contemporaries,—that the painter's life was made wretched by her violent temper. We shall find him far from blameless in later years; but though it may not excuse him, his unhappy home must largely explain his alienation.

Yet that it can explain such an alteration as that between the Louvre drawing and the Basel portrait I do not believe. Nor could I persuade myself either that any married woman of the sixteenth century wore her hair in that most exclusive and invariable of Teuton symbols—"maiden" plaits;—or that any husband ever thought it necessary to advertise upon a picture of his wife that he held her "in all honour."

Myself, I must believe, then, that this portrait was made years before 1522; probably in the young painter's first months in Basel, in 1515; and thus some fourteen years before the Basel group of 1529 was painted. It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could easily have run a natural course between 1515 and their marriage, somewhere about 1520.

As for the inscription,—it is a detail that Woltmann thinks represents a repetition of the one phrase, and that I imagine to have suggested what for some reason Holbein did not wish to proclaim:—"In all honour. [In all love.]" But nothing can shake my conviction that in it we hear the faint far-off echoes from some belfry in Holbein's own city of Îs. The realities of that chime are buried,—whether well or ill,—four hundred years deep in the seas that roll over that submerged world of his youth and passion. But living emotion, we may be sure, went to the writing and the treasuring of this pledge to Elsbeth or himself; a pledge redeemed when she became his wife.

Thus for the altar-piece of 1522 there would be this portrait of Elsbeth in her girlhood ready to his hand. But even so, see how he has idealised it, made a new creature of it, all compact of exquisite ideals! He has eliminated the subtle sensuousness which has its own allure in the drawing. Every trait is refined, purified, vivified, raised to another plane of character. Genius has put the inferior elements into its retort, and transmuted them to some heavenly metal far enough from Holbein's home-life.

Throughout all these years, as has been said, he was busy for the printers also. In 1522 he drew the noble title-page for Petri's edition of Luther's New Testament, with the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul at either side, of which mention has been made. And in Thomas Wolff's edition of 1523 there is a series of his designs. His alphabets, borders, illustrations of all sorts, continued to enrich the Basel press from this date, and were often borrowed by printers in other cities. In 1523 there came to Basel that masterly wood-cutter who has been already referred to,—Hans Lützelburger. And from this time on, therefore, Holbein's designs may be seen in their true beauty.

He had painted, besides portraits of Froben and others, at least three portraits of Erasmus by 1524. For in June of this year the latter writes to his friend Pirkheimer, at Nürnberg, to say that he has sent two of these portraits by the "most accomplished painter" to England; while the artist himself, he adds, has conveyed still a third to France.

The smaller of the two sent to England, two-thirds the size of life, is probably the one now in the Louvre ([Plate 14]). It is a masterpiece of penetration and technique. Erasmus is here seen in the most unaffected simplicity of dress and pose; in profile against a dark-green tapestry patterned with light green, and red and white flowers. The usual scholar's cap covers his grey hair. The blue-grey eyes are glancing down at his writing. Studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the Louvre drawings. The very Self of the man—the lean, strong, thinking countenance,—the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,—is alive here by some necromancy of art.