Although it does not seem unreasonable to believe that Holbein would have lacked work on his return to England, even if the social troubles of the time had been even greater than they were, it must be admitted that the painter was very fortunate in securing the patronage of the Steelyard, the great German or Anglo-German trading company established on the banks of the Thames. It was associated with the Hanseatic League; its buildings extended over a large part of the city in the neighbourhood of Thames Street and Cannon Street; its members had a Guildhall with beautiful garden in a place where London is almost at its ugliest to-day, and the Steelyard Tavern was a very noted house. To the Steelyard came all the traffic of the Orient, all the spices of the merchant. As much of Europe as had the desire to trade with England--then only a second-rate power--relied largely upon the agency of the Steelyard. The Corporation that governed the undertaking would seem to have been a very capable body, and in return for the privileges granted to it by successive rulers, every member was sworn to play a man's part in the defence of London. We have nothing like the Steelyard in Great Britain to-day, but the East India Company probably had much in common with it; and had Rhodesia proved worthy of the highest hopes entertained by its founder, the Chartered Company might have been conducted on similar lines. Such associations are apt to spring up when an old country discovers a new one. German trading associations were as pushful in Renaissance times as they are to-day, and more artistic. It should be remembered that Bellini, Titian, and Tintoretto worked for German merchants in Venice.
When Holbein came back to London to find Warham and Colet dead, and Sir Thomas More, with but a little space of life left, retiring from the high office of Chancellor, he seems to have found new friends in the Steelyard; and perhaps because he was anxious to establish a position among the members of the richest trading guild of his time, he seems to have devoted a great deal of care and time to his world-famous portrait of George Gisze, one of the merchants of the Steelyard. The picture, in an admirable condition of preservation, is to be seen in the Berlin Gallery, and is one of the richest, most decorative portraits ever painted by the artist. It will be found reproduced in these pages, and perhaps there will be some who will wonder whether the artist did not work deliberately to interest and astonish his new clients, and whether, for that purpose, he did not depart from his usual reticence and good taste. The portrait of Gisze himself, a handsome man, wearing a bright scarlet doublet under a black cloak, is admirable, it arrests and holds the attention. But the heterogeneous mass of accessories startles and tires the spectator. Vase and flowers, scissors, book, scales, letters, golden balls, inscription, keys, watches, seals--there seems to be no limit to the material with which Holbein has loaded his canvas, and the accessories are all so well painted that they seem to be wasted. There is no reason to doubt that Holbein was deliberately painting a picture for purpose of advertisement, and that he intended to make his appeal to a class that, for all its business acumen and commercial intelligence, was not on the same intellectual plane as the men of Sir Thomas More's world.