In the summer of 1528 the painter bade farewell for ever to Sir Thomas More's gracious Chelsea home. He took with him the pen-and-ink sketch for a large picture of More in the midst of his family, which has been already referred to. This was for Erasmus, who had temporarily abandoned Basel,—now so utterly unlike the Basel of former years,—and had sought the more sympathetic atmosphere of Freiburg. Bonifacius Amerbach, from the same causes, was here with Erasmus for some time. So that something like the old Froben days must have seemed still about them as the three friends sat together and talked of all that had come and gone.

But by the latter part of August Holbein was back in that now sadly-altered Basel whence his best friends were reft by trouble or death. And on the 29th of August, 1528, he bought the house next to Froben's Buchhaus, the deed attesting that he did so in person, in company with Elsbeth. The price, 300 guldens or florins, was by no means the small one it now seems, nor could the painter pay the whole sum at once. He paid down one-third, and secured the rest by a mortgage. The site of this house is now occupied by 22 St. Johann Vorstadt. Three years later, March 28th, 1531, Holbein bought out a disagreeable neighbour; and thus added to his two-storied house overlooking the Rhine the little one-storied cottage which cost him only seventy guldens. The factory at No. 20 now partially covers this latter site. Fifty years ago both of the original houses were still standing; quaint, crumbling, affecting monuments of days when Holbein's voice and Holbein's step rang through their rooms, when Frau Elsbeth swept and garnished them; and when four children added their links to the chain of a marriage which Holbein was now manfully trying to make the best of.

It must have been in the year after the purchase of the larger house that he painted the group of his wife and the two children she had then borne him. This life-size group, done in oils on paper, is now in the Basel Museum ([Plate 25]). The stoical sincerity with which they are represented, and the hard outline produced by cutting out the work to mount it on its wood panel, makes a somewhat repellent impression at the first glance. And this is in no way dispersed by studying Elsbeth's traits. But the painting itself is a tour-de-force. By sheer Quality Holbein has invested these portraits,—a middle-aged, coarse-figured, unamiable-looking woman, a very commonplace infant, and a bright-faced boy,—with the prestige inseparable from an achievement of a high order.

PLATE 25.
ELSBETH, HOLBEIN'S WIFE, WITH THEIR TWO ELDEST CHILDREN
Oils. Basel Museum
Click to [ENLARGE]

Clearly Elsbeth Holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut and fashion of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in the Louvre. Her lustreless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil and a reddish-brown cap. Her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. The baby wears a gown of undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of dark bluish green.

Out of such unpromising materials has the painter made a picture that would challenge attention among any. If we knew nothing as to the identity of this woman, sitting oblivious of the children at her knee, wrapped in her own dark thoughts, we should certainly want to know something of her story and of the story of the little fellow whose eyes are breathlessly intent upon some purer, sweeter vision. There is at Cologne, in a private collection, a deeply interesting duplicate of this work; also on paper afterwards mounted on wood, but not cut out. Unfortunately this latter has suffered such irremediable injuries that it is quite impossible now to pronounce upon its claim to be either the earlier example or a replica; but good judges have believed it to be by Holbein. Its chief interest, however, from a biographical point of view, may be said to lie in the sixteenth-century writing pasted on at the top. Literally translated, this runs—

"Love towards God consists in Charity.
Who hath this love can feel no hate."[5]

It is difficult to see on what grounds Woltmann, who was inclined to accept the picture as genuine, should hold the inscription to have been added by someone desirous of increasing the value of the work by representing it to be an allegorical picture of Charity. There was never a time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value as the portraits. And surely the second line is utterly inconsistent with the theory. Original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a plea which Holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a bitterness his own errors could not have tended to cure.

When the Basel painting was cut out to be mounted, the last numeral was lost; so that it now stands dated 152-. But all the other facts put it beyond question that the picture could not have been done before 1529. The baby of 1522 was now the boy of seven, and his successor would seem to have been born during the first months of its father's visit to England, and to be now some eighteen months old.

It may be as well to say here, once for all, as much as need be said of Holbein's family. As already stated, his wife survived him by six years, dying at Basel in 1549. By her first marriage she had one son, Franz Schmidt—who seems to have been a worthy and successful man of trade. She was the mother of four children by her marriage with Holbein;—Philip, born 1522; Katharina, 1527; Jacob, about 1530; and Künegoldt, about 1532.