“ If in any branch of his art he can be said to have had a conscience at this period, we should say that he showed it in his portrait drawings. It is seldom that we find a painted likeness worthy of the name. The drawings of which numbers are still preserved in the galleries of Basel, Berlin and Copenhagen show extraordinary quickness and delicacy of hand, and a wonderful facility for seizing character; and this happily is one of the features which Holbein bequeathed to his more famous son, Hans the younger. ”

“ Old Holbein seems to ape Leonardo, allowing his hair and beard to grow wildly, except on the upper lip. Hans the younger is a plain-looking boy. But his father points to him with his finger, and hints that though but a child he is clearly a prodigy.
After 1516 Hans Holbein the elder appears as a defaulter in the registers of the tax-gatherers at Augsburg; but he willingly accepts commissions abroad. At Issenheim in Alsace, where Grünewald was employed in 1516, old Holbein also finds patrons, and contracts to complete an altarpiece. ”

“ The elder Holbein was a prolific artist, who left many pictures behind him. Earlier than the Basilica of St Paul, already mentioned, is the Basilica of St Mary Maggiore, and a Passion in eleven pieces, in the Augsburg gallery, both executed in 1499. Another Passion, with the root of Jesse and a tree of the Dominicans, is that preserved in the Staedel, Saalhof, and church of St Leonard at Frankfort. ”