Some years before the painter's death he took Philip Holbein to Paris, and there apprenticed him to the eminent goldsmith, Jerome David, with whom he remained until a couple of years after Holbein's death. Later, he somehow drifted to Lisbon, where he followed his trade until he settled in the old home of his grandfather and great-grandfather, Augsburg. In 1611 his son, Philip Holbein, junior, then "Imperial Court Jeweller" at Augsburg, petitioned the Emperor Matthias for letters patent to "confirm" his right to certain noble arms. The claims put forward in this document are utterly at variance with the received belief in Holbein's humble Augsburg origin. Yet the most expert investigators who have carefully studied this subject agree in thinking that this grandson based the genealogical tree on mythical foundations, and therefore planted it remote from Augsburg itself. But be this as it may—and it seems hard to reconcile such discrepancies within a century of the time when both Hans Holbein the Elder and his son were well-known citizens of Augsburg,—the application was successful. Mechel says that this Philip, who claims descent from the renowned "painter of Basel," lived in Vienna during his later years; and that a descendant of his again got their patent "confirmed" in 1756, with the right to carry the surname of Holbeinsberg; also that this latter descendant was made a Knight of the Empire in 1787, as the noble von Holbeinsberg. So much for the eldest branch, that of Philip Holbein.

The younger boy, Jacob, was a goldsmith in London after Holbein's death. The evidence seems to show that he was never here previous to that event,—which of itself may have first occasioned his coming, though hardly at the time, as Jacob was not more than thirteen at his father's death. A document in existence proves that he also died in London, about 1552, and apparently unmarried; at which time his elder brother, Philip, was still in Lisbon.

Katharina, the elder daughter, the baby of the Basel painting, seems to have left no descendants. She married a butcher of Basel and died in 1590. And in the same year, very likely from one of the frequent epidemics so fatal to Basel, died Künegoldt, Elsbeth's youngest child. The Merian family of Frankfurt-am-Main claims an hereditary right to the artistic gifts of its famous copper-engraver, Mathew Merian, as descendants of Holbein through this daughter Künegoldt, who, when she died, was the wife of Andreas Syff, a miller, of Basel. According to the greatest authority on this subject, Eduard His, to whose exhaustive researches we owe almost all that is known of Holbein's family, the Merian claims have not, so far, been proved by actual archives; but he is of opinion that there is considerable circumstantial evidence to support their claim to be lineal descendants of Holbein through the female line.

But in 1529, when the family group was painted, neither Jacob nor Künegoldt were yet born; and the painter was much more concerned with the anxieties of a living father than with the shadowy cares of an ancestor.

And dark enough was the outlook in Basel, where the Lutheran agitation had, as Erasmus said, "frozen the arts." Before Holbein came back from England many churches had abjured all pictures. The tide of religious antagonism had, as we know, driven both Erasmus and Bonifacius Amerbach for a time to a Catholic stronghold; and had driven their old friend Meyer to do literal battle on behalf of the Church.

Altar paintings were out of the question. And Holbein could but devote himself to designs for the printers and for goldsmiths. Many beautiful compositions for both crafts remain to testify of his matured powers and constant industry. The exquisite designs for dagger-sheaths, in particular, are rightly counted among the treasures of art. But in the summer of 1530 came a commission for the painter's last great work in Basel. This was the long-delayed order for the decoration of that vacant wall in the Council Hall, which adjoined the house zum Hasen.

Oddly enough, this commission also came officially through a burgomaster, Jacob Meyer. But the Meyer of 1530, Meyer "of-the-Stag" (zum Hirten), had neither blood nor sentiments in common with the Meyer under whom Holbein had done his first work in the Rathaus. Each headed a party at deadly issue. For the past year Meyer-of-the-Hare had vainly tried to turn back the clock or to stay the iconoclastic fury of the hour. Religious fanaticism had wrecked him as well as every beautiful piece of art on which it could lay its hands. And now at last it mattered nothing any more so far as he was concerned. The dreadful harvests that had brought virtual famine, the earthquake shocks which had unsettled many a mental as well as material foundation, the flooding devastations of the Birsig, the rage of Canton against Canton, the Civil War ready to begin, Pope or Luther come by his own,—it was all one at last to Meyer zum Hasen, who died just as his protégé of earlier years was commissioned to paint the blank wall.

But something of his spirit, something of what he himself had been preaching to Basel in warning and threat for years, seems to have passed on into the pictures Holbein set before the Council. The paintings, alas! are no more. But a fragment or two and the drawings for them show how truly grand the two works were which Holbein had probably already intended should be his swan-song as Holbein Basiliensis. He chose for his subjects Rehoboam's answer to the suffering Israelites: "My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins; my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions"; and Samuel prophesying to Saul how dearly he shall learn that "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry."

Both subjects are treated in the Great manner. Rehoboam, leaning forward from his throned seat with flashing eyes, and his little finger seeming actually to quiver in the air, is wonderfully conceived. But the meeting of Samuel and Saul ([Plate 26]) most splendidly demonstrates how far Holbein towered above mere portraiture when he had the opportunity. To picture this drawing in all the beauty of colour is to realise what we have lost, and what his just fame has lost, with the utter destruction of such works.

PLATE 26.
Behold to obey is better than sacrifice
SAMUEL DENOUNCING SAUL
Washed Drawing. Basel Museum
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