Arthur B. Chamberlain

“ In all these large decorative works Holbein displayed the greatest fertility of invention, and a power of dramatic composition of a very high order. The extraordinary energy of conception, the sense of life and movement in all his figures, the truth and expressiveness of their gestures, are all alike admirable. This dramatic power is at its finest in his wall-paintings for the Basel Town Hall—the “Rehoboam” and the “Samuel and Saul”; while in dignity and grandeur of composition, and the noble rhythm of its stately movement, the “Triumph of Riches” panel for the Steelyard is unsurpassed. ”

“ The Rich Man, in a gloomy chamber with a window with heavy double bars, sits surrounded by his money-chests and bags, a heap of gold spread before him on the table. He springs up in a fury of anger at the sight of Death, perched on a stool and filling a large bowl with money from the heap. It is as bitter to him to lose his wealth as his life. Equally furious is the feeling displayed by the Merchant, upon whom Death pounces, seizing him by both hair and cloak, at the moment when he is examining and checking his bales and barrels of merchandise which have just been unshipped on the quay. ”

“ This manipulative skill delights and attracts, but is forgotten when the portrait itself is examined. Without any apparent effort on the part of the painter, the sitter looks out from the panel just as he did in life, set down without flattery, with no harsh features softened, and with his character, seized with such penetrative and imaginative power by Holbein, fixed for ever with unerring truth and errorless draughtsmanship for succeeding generations to see and to admire. ”

“ All the details, more particularly the elaborate ornaments of the woman’s dress, are drawn with a truth and delicacy that already falls but little short of the brilliance of his technique in such a masterpiece of portraiture as the Georg Gisze in Berlin, or the Jane Seymour in Vienna. The colour, though rich and strongly contrasted, is harmonious and delicate in the general effect it produces. The whole work, indeed, gives the impression that it is from the hand of an artist who is already sure of his methods. ”

“ The handling is both brilliant and delicate in all the accessories, in the fine modelling of the flesh, and in the wonderful draughtsmanship of the right hand grasping the glove. As a likeness of a living man and as an expression of the most intimate traits of his character, it holds its own with any piece of portraiture in the world, and is, indeed, complete in every respect, displaying the finest taste in conception combined with consummate skill and unerring accuracy in execution, and most harmonious colour. ”

“ THE GREYSTOKE PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS The Greystoke picture [406] has every appearance of being a work from Holbein’s own brush. The masterly modelling, the fine and subtle draughtsmanship, the wonderful expression of the mouth and the still keen and brilliant eyes, are too good and too true to life to be the work of a mere copyist. The cheeks are more sunken and the face more heavily lined than in the portraits of 1523. ”

“ The boisterous, even brutal, merriment of these fellow-countrymen of his, as they fling themselves into the pleasures of the dance with the utmost abandon, made an undoubted appeal to him, and in depicting them he expressed the joy of living which animates every movement with the utmost frankness and realism.
In this wide field of mural decoration and historical painting Holbein was the first and the greatest of those painters north of the Alps who came under the influence of the Italian revival of art. In him the Renaissance found very complete expression. ”

“ In the painting of hands Holbein was always a master, but he never accomplished anything finer in this direction than those of the young Duchess. The portrait, indeed, bears the stamp of truth in every line. The painter, who never exaggerated, has made no attempt to add to the lady’s beauty; such as she was he painted her. The draperies are admirably arranged, and the painting of fur and satin as good as anything Holbein ever did, even in such portraits as that of Gisze. ”

“ No emotion has hurried the painter’s hand or confused his eye this time. In vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. He knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker’s coast. No faltering; no turning back. He can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. He is a painter now; not a lover.... The plague was raging in Basel all through that spring and summer, but I doubt if Holbein shuddered at its contact as at the loveliness he painted,” [518] and so on. ”

“ Holbein’s drawings are matchless in the delicacy of their modelling, every little depression or prominence in the contours of the face being indicated with an exactitude and a simplicity of means unrivalled in work of such nature; and also for the way in which this delicacy of touch in handling the crayon, and subtlety and precision of the strengthening lines with brush or pencil, are combined with the wonderful vigour and sense of life with which each individual drawing is filled. ”

“ Death helps him in ploughing the last furrow, and flogs forward the worn-out team of thin and miserable horses. At the end of the field with its long ploughed lines a delightful landscape lies stretched, with the houses of a village nestling among the trees, the church tower rising from the hillside on one of the lower spurs of the Swiss mountains, the whole peaceful scene flooded with the light of the setting sun. This background is, perhaps, the most beautiful of all, and yet its lovely effect is produced with the simplest means. ”

“ He sees similar traits in Holbein’s sacred paintings, and this insensibility he regards as not real, but feigned, springing from the intelligence rather than from the heart. Lovers of Holbein’s art, however, will find it difficult to follow him in his contention.
As a draughtsman pure and simple he stands among the very highest; in some of the qualities of his line he has never been surpassed or even equalled. In the Windsor and kindred drawings, preliminary studies for his portraits, his genius finds its most perfect expression, and these are, in many ways, the greatest of his works. ”

“ The background is a very picturesque landscape with high mountains, on one of which rises a castle, and the western sun, filling the sky with light, is just sinking behind their crests. Next comes the Duke with his retinue, of whom a poor woman with her child begs alms, and as he turns his head away in refusal, Death, crowned with a wreath of vine-leaves, reaches forward as though to pluck his ermine cape from his shoulders. ”

“ It is a pen drawing heightened with white on a dark grey ground, and represents the Madonna seated on a stone bench over which her cloak is spread, supporting the Infant Christ in his first attempts to walk. The Child, with one arm and leg uplifted, is laughing with delight, and the attitude of the Virgin, with head bent down, and her long hair blown on one side as though by a breeze, is one of great beauty. ”

“ In his left hand he holds the long white wand of his office of Lord High Treasurer, and in his right the shorter gold baton, tipped with black, which he carried as hereditary Earl Marshal of England. Across the shoulders hangs the magnificent and richly-jewelled collar of the Order of the Garter with the pendant George, which is painted with all Holbein’s wonderful mastery in the clear rendering of minute ornament. The face, clean-shaven, and of a brown complexion, displays remarkable subtlety in the delineation of a proud and cruel nature. ”

“ But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed, every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, beneath that errorless hand. The man himself what he was—not more ”

“ There is nothing of the dignity or the supernatural beauty which so often irradiate the inanimate countenance shortly after life has passed away; but, regarded as a work of art, the picture is in the highest sense one of great beauty by reason of the mastery of its technical achievement, the knowledge it displays of the human body, its absolute truth to nature, and the harmony of its colouring. ”

“ Her brown eyes look straight at the spectator. More than one writer, influenced no doubt by these stories of her lack of beauty, has described this portrait as the likeness of a heavy, expressionless, ill-favoured woman; but this is far from being the case. Without any pretensions to extraordinary good looks, the face is a pleasant one, and by no means as plain as it has been described; indeed, in many ways it compares favourably with that of Queen Jane Seymour. That it is a truthful representation is certain, for Holbein never failed in this respect. ”

“ Allowing for some years’ difference in age, this may well, I think, be the same person as she who appears in the Augsburg picture. But, whether it be the mother of the great painter or no, it is certainly a study which shows Hans Holbein the Elder to have been possessed in some degree of those very qualities in which his son afterwards stood supreme. There is something of the same sympathetic power of seeing, and the same completeness of recording what has been seen, without pedantries and without makeshifts, all that gives to any given human face its charm and its interest.... ”

“ No great subtleties of light and shade are attempted, and his colour, beautiful and true as it is, helps but does not overpower his chief purpose—the complete realisation of the man both in body and soul. Holbein was a painter whose keenness of observation was extraordinary; he missed little or nothing, and saw much that lesser painters would have ignored. With his smooth, fusing methods of painting he reached to most marvellously delicate and 318accurate modelling of form, which in its expressiveness is beyond all words. ”

“ The face is round and full, and of the German type, and in its features by no means one of ideal loveliness, but the happy and tender smile which hovers on the lips, and the deep maternal love which shines in the eyes, give to it a very real and arresting beauty of its own. The plump, round-headed Child is a delightful study from real life. ”

“ The artist who possesses in a high degree any such power as that I have attempted to define, must of necessity have the requisite aptitude for success in either painting, architecture, or sculpture, or all three; since the power in question lies at the root of and is indispensable to the satisfactory practice of either or all. Architects will do well to look earnestly at such reliques as time has spared of the genius of Dürer, Da Vinci, and especially of Hans Holbein, since, so far as I know, they were the best makers of working drawings who ever lived. ”

“ The wonderful truth with which he has realised them, however, the fine rich colour, and the luminous painting of the flesh tones, combine to make it one of his greatest works, in the study and appreciation of which the want of physical beauty in the principal sitter and the severe plainness of the costumes are overlooked and forgotten. Though only six years later than the Solothurn Madonna and the portrait at the Hague, Elsbeth Holbein has already lost all appearance of youth, and the cares of life have left heavy traces behind them. ”

“ Ruskin’s glowing description of the picture is well known, but it is so true and so eloquent that a sentence from it may be quoted:—
“Every accessory is perfect with a fine perfection; the carnations in the glass by his side; the ball of gold, chased with blue enamel, suspended on the wall; the books, the steelyard, the papers on the table, the seal ring with its quartered bearings—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. ”

“ In this scene there is little of the energy and even violence of the earlier pictures; for the action has come to an end with the death of Christ, and Holbein has depicted it as though a hush had fallen over the multitude of people who, with uplifted faces, are gazing on their handiwork. Their attitudes are quiet and restrained, the vehemence of passion has subsided, and the presence of death has quelled all anger and clamour. ”

“ He sits alone in his accustomed room, his common work laid out before him; he is conscious of no presence, assumes no dignity, bears no sudden or superficial look of care or interest, lives only as he lived—but for ever. It is inexhaustible. Every detail of it wins, retains, rewards the attention with a continually increasing sense of wonderfulness. It is also wholly true. So far as it reaches, it contains the absolute facts of colour, form, and character, rendered with an unaccusable faithfulness. ”