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The Dresden Gallery possesses a very fine copy of this picture, with certain alterations, which, until the two pictures were exhibited side by side in 1871, was considered by most critics to be the original work. It is now acknowledged to be only a skilful copy, probably done about one hundred years later, when Meyer's descendants sold the picture to an Amsterdam dealer about 1626. Certain alterations have been made by the copyist in the hope of improving the picture. In the original the head of the Virgin comes too near to the top of the niche, and this has been remedied, and he has tried to improve and beautify Mary's somewhat thick-set figure, resulting in a lack of natural force and a weak idealization which Holbein himself would have scorned. The happy-looking Child of the Darmstadt picture has been copied so badly and with so unhappy an expression that it has been thought to represent a sick child, and it is probably owing to this that a number of fanciful interpretations have been given of the hidden meaning of the picture. Both in colour and in effect the copy in no way equals the original, which is in all ways a picture of noble simplicity, splendid colour, and striking veracity of portraiture. The Darmstadt picture was painted about 1526. Meyer was a banker and money-changer, and during the struggles of the Reformation remained a staunch Catholic, and no doubt ordered this altar-piece as an outward sign of the faith that was in him.

For reasons already mentioned a number of suggestions, more or less improbable, have been made as to the inner meaning of the painting. It has been suggested that it is a votive picture to commemorate the recovery of a sick child. This idea is carried still further by others, who say that the infant in the Madonna's arms is the soul of a dead child, while a third interpretation is that it

is the soul of the woman kneeling next to the Virgin, who is supposed to have recently died. Other explanations have been given, but they are all sentimental refinements of modern German criticism, first voiced by Tieck and Schlegel, which might not have occurred to them if they had studied the original instead of the copy. Ruskin was on the side of the sentimentalists. He says : "The received tradition respecting the Holbein Madonna is beautiful, and I believe the interpretation to be true. A father and mother have prayed to her for the life of their sick child. She appears to them, her own Child in her arms. She puts down her Christ before them, takes their child into her arms instead; it lies down upon her bosom, and stretches its hands to its father and mother, saying farewell." The simplest explanation, and the most probable, is that it is merely an ordinary picture of Virgin and Child with the donors in adoration, and it is splendid enough in its simplicity without the need of any refined subtleties added to it by Teutonic sentimentalists.

Dinteville came here as French Ambassador more than once, and was in London in that capacity from February to November, 1533, the year in which the picture was painted, and during that time De Selve paid him a visit. George de Selve was appointed to the see of Lavaur in 1526, when only eighteen, but was not consecrated Bishop until 1534, and so in the picture is not shown in episcopal dress. He was one of six brothers, nearly all of whom gained distinction as Ambassadors. He himself served as Ambassador on a number of occasions, and his piety, his profound learning, and his keen interest in all intellectual pursuits, as Miss Hervey tells us in her exhaustive study of these two men and their picture, made him one of the most remarkable men of his day.

The two men stand on each side of a high, two-shelved table. Dinteville, on the left, is gorgeously dressed in a doublet of rose satin, with a black jacket and surcoat lined with ermine. His dark hair is cut straight across his forehead. De Selve, on the right, is clad in a long brocaded gown of chocolate colour, lined with brown fur. His hair and beard are also dark. Both shelves of the table are covered with a number of books, mathematical, musical, and other instruments, including a celestial and a terrestrial globe, sundial, lute, flutes, and other emblems of the pursuits in which they were interested. The curious object in the foreground is merely a distorted skull, which, when looked at from the side, assumes its proper proportions--a kind of optical puzzle, which had some vogue in the sixteenth century. The pattern of the pavement of coloured marbles was copied by the artist from the one in the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.

Erasmus is represented in his black doctor's robes, heavily trimmed with fur, and a black cap. His hands rest upon a book, bearing the inscription, partly in Greek and partly in Latin, "The Herculean labours of Erasmus of Rotterdam." A curtain is behind his head, and on the left a stone pillar carved with fine Renaissance design. On the right a number of books are placed upon

a small shelf, and on one of the volumes is the date 1523, and a half-effaced Latin distich, in which Holbein's name can still be read. The philosopher, turned slightly to the left, is gazing in front of him, deep in thought.

Mr. Claude Phillips has admirably described this picture . He says: "Holbein has rarely painted with a more exquisite subtlety or a firmer grip of his subject than here. The modelling of the head and hands is perfect in its searching truth and fine balance, showing none of that exaggeration and hardness of facial detail which so often mars the pictorial and obscures the intellectual conceptions in the portraits of Albrecht D?rer. Bodily suffering and advancing age have a little extinguished physical energy, but yet the great scholar of Rotterdam appears here surely but undemonstratively portrayed in his true character. He was the chief representative of the broader humanism in the Reformation, the one man able to look calmly at the world as it was--able to weigh, to judge, but also to show toleration--that is, provided his own comfort and security were not thereby interfered with."

The Louvre example, showing Erasmus writing, in profile, is smaller and richer in colour than the Longford example, and even more searching in its rendering of truth and character.

The young merchant is shown in his office, behind a table covered with a cloth of Eastern design, with the various objects that he requires in his business scattered in front of him and about the room. Among them is a graceful Venetian glass holding carnations. Papers and letters are fastened to the walls, one of which he is just opening, upon which can be read the address: "To the honourable Georg Gisze, my brother, in London, England." On the wall hangs a paper with his motto: "Nulla sine merore voluptas." He has fair hair, and is dressed in red, with black cap and overcoat, and a white shirt with a collar of Spanish work. All the accessories, whether of silk, or linen, or gold, or steel, or glass, are painted with a fidelity to nature never excelled by the Dutchmen or Flemings of the following century, who devoted their whole career to the rendering of still-life. In Holbein's work, however, this elaboration of detail is soon forgotten in the fascination which the vivid representation of the sitter's personality produces in the spectator and the power displayed by the artist in seizing the essentials of a character.

According to Dr. Woltmann, Gisze belonged to a family residing in the neighbourhood of Basle, and even to-day, in the small adjacent town of Liestall, the name, in the form of Gysin, is to be seen over many houses. Even on the picture it is spelt in more ways than one. Miss Hervey considers it to be a variation of the surname Gueiss, one of the most distinguished in the annals of the Steelyard, and well known in Cologne. Georg Gisze was deputy Alderman of the Steelyard in 1533.

Christina stands, almost the size of life, facing the spectator, dressed in "mourning aparel after the manner of Italy"--a black satin gown, and over it a long black cloak lined with yellow sable. A black hood covers her hair and part of her forehead, and a ruby ring is her only ornament. You cannot call her very beautiful, but her expression is fascinating in the highest degree. It is painted with the utmost simplicity and directness, and yet is stamped with real grandeur of style in every delicate stroke of the brush. Her slender form is admirably rendered, and Holbein, in the spirit of a true artist, has chosen to depict her in all the severity of her widow's weeds, rather than in the bravery of the Brussels court lady, thus giving an added effect to her sweet childish countenance, which is modelled in the most masterly fashion. Her dark eyes, from under fair eyebrows, seem to admit one to her most secret thoughts, and the red lips are full of expression. The flesh tints are unusually transparent, and a faint rosy glow of health just flushes her cheeks. "She is not so white as the late Queen," says Hutton, "but she hath a singular good countenance, and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becomith her excellently well. She is higher than the Regent, a goodly personage of body and competent of beauty, of favour excellent, soft of speech, and very gentle in countenance." It is an exquisite portrait, and one of the most precious in the country.

For some reason, probably the Papal excommunication of Henry, the Emperor suddenly became hostile to this alliance, and the negotiations were broken off. She herself seems to have been not unwilling to become an English Queen. Sir Thomas Wyatt reported that she was somewhat flighty, but Hutton, on the other hand, mentions "her honest countenance, and the few words she wisely spoke." The popular tradition runs that she sent a respectfully sarcastic refusal to Henry, saying that "she had but one head; if she had two, one of them should be at His Majesty's service." She married Francis, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, in 1541.

character. Cheseman, who is forty-eight, wears a silk doublet of purplish-red, with the customary black overcoat trimmed with fur. His curly hair is beginning to turn gray. He holds a hooded hawk on his gloved left hand, and strokes its feathers with his right. The bird is splendidly painted, and the keen, piercing eyes and clean-cut face of its master are wonderfully rendered. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who noted it during his travels in Holland, speaks of it as "admirable for its truth and precision, and extremely well coloured."

Both in treatment and in feeling this picture is very similar to the altar-piece of the Passion, in eight compartments, in the Basle Museum, and must have been painted about the same time, between 1520 and 1527. In sentiment it is one of the most poetical of Holbein's compositions, and an admirable example of his rendering of light and shade in his first Basle period. "The early morning when it was yet dark" is most successfully suggested in the painting of the landscape background. Dawn is just breaking over the sky and distant Calvary, while the foreground is still in darkness, except for the light which radiates from the open sepulchre, where

the two angels can be seen seated at the head and the foot of the empty grave. Mary, who holds a cup of spikenard in her left hand, has turned round hastily in eager surprise, and stretches out her right hand towards the Saviour. Our Lord draws back from her, saying, "Touch Me not!" The dramatic action of the two figures is most expressive. In the background the two disciples, who have been before her at the sepulchre, are seen hastening away. Peter, still dubious as to the truth of the Resurrection, is talking eagerly and with animated gestures as he expresses his doubts; but John, who "saw and believed," turns back his head in reproach at a comrade who can doubt even for a moment. The composition, as a whole, is marked by a simple but impressive dignity.

This drawing is masterly, and is a splendid example of how easily Holbein seized upon the leading characteristics of a face and with a few swift strokes fixed them for our admiration for ever. In his youth More had been handsome, and, according to Erasmus, was of a fair complexion, with dark-brown hair and gray eyes. His firmly-compressed lips and his penetrating glance give to his face a sternness which he seldom displayed, except in his detestation of heretics; but fine judgment and nobility of feeling, and that mental harmony which springs from inward peace, are the leading characteristics in his face as the artist has drawn it for us here. One can see at a glance that here was a man who would always be just in his dealings with others, and unchangeable in carrying out what he knew to be his duty--a student and a man of deep learning, and yet a man of affairs and of the world, trusted by his King and admired by his equals, and losing his head on the block through his invincible honesty. Erasmus well said of him: "He possesses that beautiful ease of mind, or, still better, that piety and prudence, with which he joyfully adapts himself to everything that comes, as though it were the best that could come."

LIST OF THE ARTIST'S CHIEF WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES

GREAT BRITAIN.

SIR HENRY GUILDFORD, MASTER OF THE HORSE, 1527.

HANS OF ANTWERP AND OF THE STEELYARD, 1532.

DERICH BORN, OF THE STEELYARD, 1533.

THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK, ABOUT 1540.

CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN, 1538.

A small panel, showing head and hands only, possibly an earlier study than the full-length belonging to the Duke of Norfolk.

Small bust, partly repainted. There is a replica in Prague.

JOHN RESKEMEER, OF MURTHYN, CORNWALL.

MARY MAGDALEN AT THE SEPULCHRE.

JEAN DE DINTEVILLE AND GEORGE DE SELVE , 1533.

CHRISTINA OF DENMARK, DUCHESS OF MILAN, 1538

Holbein's last work, left unfinished.

SIR HENRY WYATT.

Replica of the picture in the Louvre, and formerly in the Magniac Collection.

AUSTRIA.

GERYCK TYBIS OF DUISBURG AND THE STEELYARD, 1533.

QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR, ABOUT 1537.

A small half-length; there is a copy of it at Woburn Abbey.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN, AGED 28, 1541.

A very fine portrait, probably of an Englishman.

DR. JOHN CHAMBER, ABOUT 1541.

A small half-length of a very old man. Chamber's portrait in the Barber Surgeons' picture is one of the few heads in that work in which the hand of Holbein can now be traced.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY.

With an elaborate head-dress. Small half-length.

PORTRAIT OF AN ENGLISHMAN, AGED 30, 1534.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY, AGED 28, 1534.

Two small rounds on canvas; portraits of some English courtier and his wife, the man in a scarlet coat, with the letters H.R. embroidered in gold.

FRANCE.

WILLIAM WAREHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, 1527.

A replica of the portrait in Lambeth Palace.

SIR HENRY WYATT, 1527 OR 1528.

The father of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet. Formerly called a portrait of Sir Thomas More. There is a replica of it in the National Gallery of Ireland.

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