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Updated: June 10, 2025
You may handle the quaintest of ideas carried out in ivory; a skeleton carrying a baboon calculated to beat Holbein's "Dance of Death" all to pieces; skulls with cobras intertwined indeed, the serpent is everywhere; and all with some mystic meaning. "The date of the workmanship of these," said Sir Robert, "must go back for centuries." "I should think to the very beginning!"
"And I feel sure we should observe the greatest," replied Flandrin, striding up and down the studio, and speaking with great animation. "I believe, as regards the men and women of Holbein's time, that their faces were more lined than ours; their eyes, as a rule, smaller their mouths wider their eyebrows more scanty their ears larger their figures more ungainly.
I should perhaps explain why two other essays which also appeared in The Universal Review are not included in this collection. The first of these, entitled "L'Affaire Holbein- Rippel," relates to a drawing of Holbein's "Danse des Paysans" in the Basle Museum, which is usually described as a copy, but which Butler believed to be the work of Holbein himself.
It should be carefully examined as a very interesting specimen. The Tudor arms, the rose and portcullis, are inlaid on the stand. The arched panels in the folding doors, and at the ends of the cabinet are in high relief, representing battle scenes, and bear some resemblance to Holbein's style. The general arrangement of the design reminds one of a Roman triumphal arch.
And the student of Holbein's art can but feel that Ruskin has here touched upon a characteristic of the painter's peculiar power in every phase of it; the power to be Cæsar within himself; to say to his hand, "thus far," to say to his fancy, "no farther."
Granting the grotesqueness, freedom, variety, and wonderful precision of these woodcuts, I beg my readers to contrast their spirit with that of Albrecht Dürer's 'The Knight, Death, and the Devil, or Orcagna's 'Triumph of Death. In Holbein's designs there is no noble consoling faith; there is but a fierce defiance and wild mockery of inevitable fate, such as goes beyond the levity with which the Venetians in the time of the plague retired to their country-houses and danced, sung, and told tales, till the pestilence was upon them.
That is barbarous, perhaps, but the charm of it is indescribable, and when one is accustomed to hear it, one cannot conceive of any other song at that time and in those localities that would not disturb the harmony. It happened, therefore, that I had before my eyes a picture in striking contrast with Holbein's, although it might be a similar scene.
Here is Holbein's famous picture of him; a picture that represents a man so gross, so sensual, so disgusting in appearance, that one recognizes its truth, and wonders that the court-painter did not lose his head for such a libellous sincerity.
Many years had passed before he could say that. But peace of mind did not come with competence. It never came. He never became truly placid and serene, as Holbein's picture seems to represent him. He was always too much concerned about what people said or thought of him. Even at Basle he did not feel thoroughly at home.
For a week I had to have everything cleaned at least once a day, and even then I found the loathsome creatures in every fold, under straps, in pouches. On that afternoon I had a great success as an artist. My drawings of pigs, trees and men went the rounds and were quite immoderately admired, and preserved as we would a sketch of Holbein's.
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