Hans Holbein the Younger, Volume 1 (of 2) by Arthur B. Chamberlain

DESIGNS FOR PAINTED GLASS AND OTHER STUDIES Holbein’s work as a designer for the glass-painters—Eight panels of saints—The “Prodigal Son”—The “Two Unicorns”—Designs with landsknechte at Berne, Basel, Berlin, and Paris—Heraldic drawings for Erasmus and others—Designs showing the influence of North German art—“Virgin and St. John”—The “Annunciation”—“St. Elizabeth”—“Virgin and Child with kneeling donor”—The great “Passion” series—Studies of costumes of Basel ladies—“St. Adrian”—Studies from the nude—“A Fight”—Animals. IN addition to his commissions, both public and private, for wall-paintings, Holbein was frequently employed in the preparation of designs for artificers in more than one branch of decorative art. The Amerbach Collection is rich in works of this class, more particularly in designs for glass windows. It must be remembered in studying these “scheibenrisse” that they were intended for painted, and not for stained, glass. The older method of employing translucent glass of various tints, in which the colour is incorporated in the body of the glass itself, so that the window depended for its beauty on its transparency, had already become, in the Switzerland of Holbein’s day, a little-practised and, in some districts, an almost forgotten art, its place being taken by glass, usually white, on which the design was painted in enamel colours and afterwards permanently fixed by refiring. Such glass painting produced the effect of a semi-opaque design on a translucent ground, and, beginning merely with a few brown lines to indicate the features, or the patterns on a dress, it had gradually developed, in Germany and Switzerland, into a method of pictorial representation which imitated as closely as possible a painted picture, and was, therefore, in marked contrast to the older and more beautiful art, in which the great aim of the artist was to produce a lovely effect of transparent colour. In the newer method, which in reality was opposed to the true nature of the medium employed, but which nevertheless became a thing of beauty when designed by a master, small panels, as a rule, were used, which were surrounded by plain white glass, so that they had the appearance of little pictures set in the middle of a window. The panels being small ones, and the subjects on them drawn on a small scale, it was necessary that the panes should be placed near the ground so that they could be properly seen, and this, again, made it essential that the draughtsmanship should be as careful and delicate as possible, design having usurped the place of colour. These glass paintings were usually surrounded by a framework of a decorative nature which divided them sharply from the plain glass around them, and helped still more to produce the effect of a picture. The lines of leadwork, which, in the older method, held the pieces of vari-coloured glass together, were abandoned as much as possible, as they naturally marred the delicate pictorial effect of the work, and were sometimes confined to the boundary lines of the panel. Under such conditions it was natural that the glass-workers should turn to artists for their supply of designs, since accurate draughtsmanship was now all-important. Holbein, who was largely employed by the Basel glaziers and glass-painters for this purpose, made the freest and finest use of this new convention in the decoration of windows. The convention was, no doubt, a wrong one, and in the end all but extinguished the older and more beautiful art, but Holbein took it as he found it, and brought to it all his mastery of design and purity of line, so that the panels he produced were of great beauty and fine decorative effect. In his day glass-painting was no longer confined to the services of the Church, but was introduced into the windows of all private houses of importance, usually in the form of single panes with the householder’s coat of arms, or with sacred or profane subjects, according to his tastes. Thus he had many opportunities of showing his skill in this form of decoration, and he made use of a great variety of subjects. In some instances, such as the “Passion” series described below, the treatment is frankly pictorial, and the decorative effect is confined to the framework of Renaissance architecture within which the subject is set; but in others, and more particularly those intended for the display of shields with armorial bearings, the design becomes largely a decorative one, in which the artist gives free play to his imagination and taste for ornamentation in the Italian manner. Whatever the subject, however, each drawing displays wonderfully free yet delicate draughtsmanship, skilful arrangement of the design in the space to be filled, and extraordinary facility of invention. The studies appear often to have been made to the exact size of the panel they were to decorate, and, as a rule, Holbein left the question of colour to the taste of the glass-painter; in a few cases, however, he indicated it by the addition of one or two slight tints. There can be little doubt that they were carried out largely in that combination of pale yellow for the higher lights and brown or grisaille for the darker portions and shadows which was the customary practice in Switzerland at that period, with touches of more positive colour here and there in the dresses of the figures, the landscape backgrounds, and the coats of arms. The designs are in most cases drawn with the reed pen and washed with Indian ink. [Sidenote: EIGHT PANELS OF SAINTS] Only two or three of these designs, of which some thirty or more are in existence, are dated, and, with the exception of four or five made during his sojourn in Lucerne,[300] they were all produced between the years 1519 and 1525 or 1526. Among the earliest are eight panels of Saints at Basel (Nos. 333-40),[301] which were designed in pairs, and were to be placed side by side in the two divisions of a single window, the architectural framework and background in which the figures are set corresponding in almost all details in each pair of designs, so that it is evident that they were intended to be seen together, forming between them a complete picture. They were probably produced for the decoration of some large hall, or the aisle of a church. Two other drawings belonging to the same series are contemporary copies after Holbein from the hand of some follower, one of which bears the date 1520 and the coat of arms of the town of Basel, proving that the designs were made, most probably towards the close of 1519, shortly after his return from Lucerne. They appear to have been done for the cloisters at Wettingen. The first pair represent the Virgin standing with the Infant Jesus in her arms,[302] in the left division, and some prince of the Church in the robes of a bishop in the right.[303] This last figure has been described as that of St. Pantalus, the patron saint of Basel, but there is little resemblance in expression to the fine head of that bishop in Holbein’s design for the organ shutters in the minster. Here the face is full of arrogance, rather than piety, and the prelate bears himself proudly as though conscious of his exalted position. His mitre and ecclesiastical robes are richly embroidered and ornamented. A marked peculiarity in the drawing of all the figures in this series is their appearance of stumpiness, the legs being too short for the bodies. A similar defect is to be noted in some of Holbein’s earlier designs for book ornaments. In the case of these glass designs it may have been that they were to be enlarged afterwards by the glass-painter, and placed at some height from the floor, and that Holbein, therefore, attempted foreshortening. This, however, is not very probable, as all his designs for this purpose seem to have been intended for small paintings, to be placed near the eye, and it is much more likely that this characteristic of his figures was a fault, also to be noticed in his earlier woodcut designs, of which he afterwards broke himself. The two in question are placed in an architectural setting of a somewhat fantastic design, with large open arches through which an extensive mountainous landscape is seen. Below the hills, on the right of the bishop, are the houses of a village and a stone crucifix by the wayside, and on the left a torrent rushing down a mountain gorge crowned with trees, and forming a large waterfall under a bridge of one wide arch where the stream joins the plain. The same landscape is continued in the background of the panel of the Virgin and Child, the river wandering away through another gorge among the hills on the left. This view is strongly reminiscent of the St. Gotthard district and the Devil’s Bridge over the Reuss, and affords some slight additional proof of Holbein’s expedition across the Alps.[304] A second pair represent St. Anna with the Virgin and Child, and St. Barbara.[305] Here again the unusual shortness of the figures is very apparent. St. Barbara, who is dressed in the rich costume of a Basel lady of the sixteenth century, stands in the characteristic attitude, with the upper part of her body bent backwards, and the heavy dress held up in front by the hand, as is the case in each one of the series of studies of ladies’ costumes by Holbein to be described later, which thus appears to have been the customary habit of walking at that time. The setting is less fantastic and elaborate than in the two panels just described, and consists in each of an open arch supported by pillars, with sculptured figures above the capitals. Although the details of the ornamentation of the columns do not exactly agree in the two designs, they are evidently a pair. On the left-hand panel, as in the one on the same side in the preceding set, there is an empty shield for a coat of arms, and the background is also a mountainous landscape, though drawn in less detail. In the design of St. Catherine,[306] which forms one of a pair with St. John the Baptist, the background is almost entirely filled with a building with pointed arches supported by short pillars, but on the left a narrow strip of landscape is visible, with an archway or bridge across a road with a building on the far side of it, and distant mountains behind. The face of the saint is a very charming one, and her hair falls in elaborate ringlets down her back, and is surmounted with a jewelled crown. In the pair representing St. Andrew and St. Stephen, Dr. Ganz recognises, in the arcading with flat pilasters and shallow scallop-crowned niches in front of which the saints are standing, an architectural motive taken from the cathedral of Como.[307] There is no need to describe every figure in this series in detail, each one of which wears a halo, a symbol of which Holbein afterwards made very little use. [Sidenote: THE “PRODIGAL SON” WINDOW] Two other designs for painted glass in the Basel Gallery are of about the same date as these eight sheets with figures of saints, and were done in the earlier years of his second Basel period, either in 1519 or