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In the midst of all his fresh London successes came a summons from Basel, which must have made the painter smile a little grimly. It had slowly dawned on the Council that Holbein whose renown they well knew was a feather in Basel's cap was proposing to make a prolonged absence. The result was a decision which the Burgomaster officially conveyed to him.
There is a painting which accords with this drawing in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection, but it is said to be by a French artist. Windsor Castle In the autumn of this year, 1540, the two years of absence expired which had been granted to Holbein by his contract with the Basel Council. But he had now formed ties which were too powerful to yield to Basel's.
Basel also knew that Charles had only bought his triumph by swearing to summon the Diet of Worms. All the more, therefore, was she intensely alive to the possible issues of the Arabian-Nights-Entertainment which had but just concluded on the dreary Calais flats when Holbein became one of Basel's citizens. Erasmus had come back full of it.
And here, a few years later on, came that bizarre personage who was for a very brief time Basel's "town physician," the Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus to whom we owe our word bombastic. Holbein was on a visit to England during the latter's short tenure of office, when the combined scholarship and poverty of Oporinus made him the hack of Paracelsus and the victim of many a petty tyranny.
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