Holbein Part 9

He has painted each, too, with that genius for seizing the essential quality which _is_ the thing, that never forsook him from Augsburg to Saint Andrew's Undershaft; that singular, vivid, original genius which can well afford to let his grave be forgotten, whose works build for him, as Hans Holbein--

_One of the few, the immortal names That were not born to die._

FOOTNOTES.

1: The name used thus, without further identification, is to be taken throughout these pages to mean Hans Holbein the _Younger_.

2: Variously written Meyer, Meier, Mejer, Meiger, or Megger. Bar is also written _Ber_, or _Berin_.

3: I am deeply indebted to the personal kindness and trouble of Sir Martin Gosselin, K.C.M.G., British Minister at the Court of Portugal, for greatly facilitating my own study of this interesting picture.

4: I am indebted to the personal kindness of the discoverer's son, Herr Direktor Zetter-Collin of the Solothurn Museum, for these details. But the whole story, as well as Herr Zetter-Collin's contributions to the history of the work, should be read in his own absorbingly interesting monograph:--"_Die Zetter'sche Madonna von Solothurn. (...) Ihre Geschichte, etc._" 1902.

5: _"Die Liebe zu Gott Heist charite.

Wer Liebe hat der Tragt kein Ha.s.s."_

A CATALOGUE OF THE PRINc.i.p.aL EXISTING WORKS OF HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER

ARRANGED, SO FAR AS CAN BE KNOWN, IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE

** signifies--_Superlative qualities._

* signifies--_Of some particular importance._

? signifies--_Authorities differ._ Held by some (and by the writer) to have been, in its original condition, the work of Holbein's own hand.

I.

EARLIEST INDIVIDUAL WORKS (BEFORE GOING TO BASEL)

? St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Barbara. Oils. (Wings of the St.

Sebastian altar-piece.) Munich Gallery.

Virgin and Child. Oils. Basel Museum. (Earliest signed work known.

Dated 1514.)

II.

FIRST BASEL PERIOD (1515, 1516, 1519-1526)

Ill.u.s.trations to Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_.

Eighty-two pen-and-ink sketches on the margins.

Original copy, Basel Museum.

Portrait of an unknown young man.

Oils. Grand-Ducal Museum, Darmstadt.

Jacob Meyer _zum Hasen_ and his second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser.

[Plates 4 and 5.] Oils. Basel Museum.

Bonifacius Amerbach. [Plate 6.] Oils. Basel Museum.

Portrait of himself. [Frontispiece.] Coloured Chalks. Basel Museum.

* Studies from Nature. (A bat outspread and a lamb.) Drawings in water-colour and silver-point. Basel Museum.

Designs for armorial windows. (More especially those with _Landsknechte_ and one with three peasants gossiping.) Washed Drawings. Basel Museum and Print Cabinet, Berlin.

_Landsknechte_ in a hand-to-hand fight. [Plate 7.]

Washed Drawing. Basel Museum. Others in various collections.

Design for the wings of an organ-case.

Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.

Head of St. John the Evangelist.

Oils. Basel Museum.

The Last Supper. (On wood; ruined fragment.) Oils. Basel Museum.

The Nativity [Plate 8.] and The Adoration. Oils.

Freiburg Cathedral. (Wings of a lost altar-piece.)

Holy Family. Washed Drawing. Basel Museum.

(Also other drawings of the Virgin and Child.)

The Pa.s.sion. Eight-panelled altar-piece. [Plate 9.]

Oils. Basel Museum. (Utterly ruined by over-painting.)

* The Pa.s.sion. A series of ten designs for gla.s.s-painting.

Washed Drawings. Basel Museum.

(A set of seven reversed impressions in the British Museum.)

The Man of Sorrows and the Mater Dolorosa.

Oils, in tones of brown. Basel Museum.

Christ borne to the ground by the weight of the cross.

A Washed Drawing and a * Woodcut (unique impression).

Basel Museum.

* Christ in the grave. [Plate 10.]