Unquestionably the painting now in the Schloss at Darmstadt is the earlier version. And unquestionably, too, the changes introduced in the Dresden copy,—the elevated architecture, slenderer figures, and less happy Child,—are so great as to lend weight to the arguments of those who still claim that no copyist would ever have made them. But, as has been said, the contention that the Dresden work is a replica by Holbein of the older Darmstadt altar-piece, is now maintained by only a very small minority of judges. The painting of the Darmstadt work is admitted by all to be more uniformly admirable, more completely carried out; the details more finished (except in the case of the Virgin), and the colours richer and more harmonious. Yet both works should be studied to appreciate fully their claims and differences (Plates 18 and 19).

PLATE 18.
THE MEYER-MADONNA
Oils. Grand Ducal Collection, Darmstadt
Click to [ENLARGE]

PLATE 19.
THE MEYER-MADONNA
[Later Version. Held by many to be a copy]
Oils. Dresden Gallery
Click to [ENLARGE]

In the Darmstadt work the Virgin's dress is wholly different in tone from her robe at Dresden; otherwise the colouring aims to be the same in each. Here, in the original altar-piece, it is a greenish-blue. The lower sleeves are golden, a line of white at the wrist, and a filmier one within the bodice. Her girdle is a rich red; her mantle a greenish-grey. Over this latter her fair hair streams like softest sunshine. Above her noble, pity-full face sits her crown of fine gold and pearls.

The woman kneeling nearest to the Madonna is commonly believed to be Meyer's first wife, who had died in 1511, the mother of one child—a daughter—by a previous husband. Between this stepdaughter and Meyer there was considerable litigation over her property. The younger woman, whose chin-cloth is dropped in the painting though worn like the others in the drawing for her portrait, is Meyer's second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser, whom he married about 1512, and with whom he was painted by Holbein in 1516. The sombre garments of both women are echoed by the black of Meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur. Meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a wonderful piece of psychology in the Darmstadt picture.

In the drawing for the young girl, Anna Meyer, who kneels beside her mother with a red rosary in her hands, she has her golden-brown hair hanging loose down her back, as befits a girl of thirteen. But in the painting it is coiled in glossy braids beneath some ceremonial head-dress; this is richly embroidered with pearls, with red silk tassel and a wreath of red and white flowers above it. This head-dress is painted with much more beautiful precision in the older work, and the expression of the girl's face is much more deeply devout; her hands, too, are decidedly superior to those of the Dresden work.

This is true also of the carpet, patterned in red and green, with touches of white and black, on a ground of deep yellow. The Dresden carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of Darmstadt, so much so that Waagen and others, who believe the former a replica, think a pupil or assistant may have been responsible for this and other details, which for some reason Holbein himself was unable to finish.

The elder boy, with the tumbled brown hair, dressed in a light-brown coat trimmed with red-brown velvet, and hose of cinnabar-red, with decorations of gold clasps and tags on fine blue cords, has a yellowish-green portemonnaie, with tassels of dull blue hanging from his girdle. All the carnations are superb, and in the Darmstadt picture the infant Christ wears a sweet and happy smile. In that of Dresden He looks sad and ill; a fact which has given rise to the theory Ruskin adopted—that the Virgin had put down the divine Child and taken up Meyer's ailing one. But the absence of wonder on the faces of Meyer's family, and, indeed, the familiar affection of the elder boy, would of itself negative this theory. I have my own ideas as to this point, but it would serve no useful purpose to go into them in this place. Of these two sons of Meyer there is no other record. Anna alone survived her mother, who married again after Meyer's death. Anna's daughter married Burgomaster Remigius Fäsch, or Fesch, whose grandson—Remigius Fäsch, counsellor-at-law—was the well-known art collector whose collection and manuscript are also in the Basel Museum, where there is an oil-copy of the Dresden Meyer-Madonna.

Even the cool eye of Walpole was warmed by this great work of 1526, as he saw it in the Dresden painting then hanging in the Palazzo Delfino at Venice. "For the colouring," he exclaims, "it is beautiful beyond description; and the carnations have that enamelled bloom so peculiar to Holbein, who touched his works till not a touch remained discernible." Twenty years earlier Edward Wright had written of Meyer's youngest boy—"The little naked boy could hardly have been outdone, if I may dare to say such a word, by Raphael himself." And in our own day that fine and measured critic, Mrs. Jameson, has spoken for generation upon generation who have thought the same thought before the Meyer-Madonna of Dresden, when she says of it: "In purity, dignity, humility and intellectual grace this exquisite Madonna has never been surpassed; not even by Raphael. The face, once seen, haunts the memory."