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Erasmus being taken out with a windlass, or Jael, as Altdorfer has shown her in his romantic print, neatly hammering the nail into the head of the sprawling, snoring Sisera. But there is also and Holbein's Dance of Death, terrible, jocular, tender, vulgar and poetic, contains it all, this German world a great tenderness.
It was one of his best pictures; and the person for whom it was painted, lost for a while in admiration of its beauty, noticed at last that a fly, which had settled upon the forehead, remained there motionless. He stepped up to brush the insect away, and found that it was a part of the picture. This story has, since Holbein's time, been told of many painters, among others, of Benjamin West.
And Sir Henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to decorate the interior of the Banqueting Hall specially erected for the celebration of the French Alliance in 1527. By all of which it would seem that in securing a new patron the painter had once more made a friend. Erasmus had asked Ægidius to assist Holbein's success in any way he could.
Within the gates stood the big Guildhall, which answered both for its councils and its noted banquets. The high carved mantelpieces and wainscotting served admirably to display the glittering plate and strange souvenirs of every known land and sea. On the walls which Holbein's works were so to enrich hung portraits of eminent members of the Guild.
It was literally, as he said, "a terrible painting," of which none of the stupidly-heavy copies that have for the most part travestied Holbein's work give any true conception.
That this is a portrait of Holbein's wife any careful comparison with her portrait at Basel must establish. Feature for feature, allowing for the changes of sufficient years, the two faces are one and the same. The very line of the shoulder, setting of the head, and even the outline of the fashion in which the low dress is cut, is alike in both.
Whether or not there is any truth at the bottom of the ancient tradition that this church had been originally founded by Germans, the Guild maintained its own altar in it in Holbein's time, where Masses were said on its own special days and festivals.
Hutton tells us that the painter who "slobbered" Christina's portrait had painted her in full dress. But Holbein's eye was quick to recognise the values of her everyday dress the widow's costume of Italy in enhancing the distinction of her face and the stately slenderness of her figure.
He liked Dresden, and enjoyed his visit to its picture gallery, where he especially admired a Madeleine and two Virgins by Correggio, as well as two by Raphael, one of them presumably the San Sisto Madonna. The gem of the whole collection, however, in his opinion, was Holbein's Madonna; and he longed to have Madame Hanska's hand in his while he gazed at it.
I was about to leave the king when he stopped me, saying "Please go to my Lady Castlemain's lodging over Holbein's Gate and ask her to go with us down to London. And Clyde, have my barge at the Bowling Green stairs at one o'clock so that we may take our leisure going down the river and still reach the law courts on time. Our punctuality will flatter the city folk."
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