_The Meyer Madonna_, in Darmstadt, Holbein’s greatest masterpiece of religious painting, and one of the finest sacred pictures in the world, is fully described on p. 44.
BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS AND ORNAMENTAL WOODCUTS.
Holbein’s versatility as an artist is nowhere shown more convincingly than in the illustrations he made for printed books, and the series of woodcuts which were published from his designs during the last decade of his life. His title-pages, initial letters, chapter headings, and ornamental borders, for Froben and other printers, display a rich invention, greatly in advance of most similar work of that period. In some of them the artist’s sureness of hand and firmness of drawing have been sadly blunted by the incapacity of the woodcutter. In others, however, he was very happily associated with a cutter of real genius, Hans Lützelburger, who had both the skill and intuition to carry out the master’s intentions with marvellous and sympathetic accuracy. One of the most celebrated of his title-pages is that known as _The Table of Cebes_, representing, by means of countless little figures, the soul’s journey through life.
But Holbein’s fame as a designer of woodcuts, which had spread throughout Europe before the end of the sixteenth century, was based
upon two celebrated series of designs, _The Dance of Death_ and his _Old Testament Illustrations_, in which his gifts as an illustrator are most clearly shown. _The Dance of Death_, with its forty little pictures, at once became popular, and editions followed one after the other, with additional illustrations. The subject was a very favourite one throughout mediæval Europe, and in Holbein it reaches its highest development. It is a series of short pictorial sermons, in which the artist points out to the reader how slight and how uncertain is his hold upon life, and how in the presence of death both Prince and peasant are equal. In the satire with which Holbein has treated clerics of all degrees we learn something of the way in which the Reformation influenced him. Each little picture is a masterpiece of art, in which is depicted, with grim humour, death’s unexpected approach, sparing neither King nor Pontiff, Queen nor courtesan, knight nor beggar, old age nor childhood. In each one the feeling for fine dramatic situation is admirable, the whole being indicated in a few sure lines of masterly draughtsmanship. Detailed accounts of each of the subjects will be found in Dr. Woltmann’s “Holbein and His Time,” and in Chatto and Jackson’s “History of Wood Engraving,” while Ruskin’s “Ariadne Florentina” should be read for a very sympathetic and beautiful analysis of their intellectual side, their spiritual meaning, and Holbein’s marvellous power of design for such work.