The Book of Art for Young People

e then, as now, roads over the passes of the Alps by which merchants and scholars were continually travelling from Italy thro

he successors of the Van Eycks in Flanders painted excellent portraits and small carefully studied pictures of scriptural events in wonderful detail. They were a strictly practical people whose painting of stuffs, furs, jewellery, and architecture was marvellously minute and veraci

n the works of the earlier school, perished. The influence of the Van Eycks had not been confined to Flanders. Artists in Germany had been profoundly affected. They learnt the new technique of painting from the pupils of the Van Eycks in the fifteenth century. Like them, too, they discarded gold backgrounds and tried to paint men and women as they really looked, ins

which Dürer made of himself in the looking-glass at the age of thirteen, we see a thoughtful little face gazing out upon the world with questioning eyes. Already the delicacy of the lines is striking, and the hair so beautifully finished that we can anticipate the later artist whose pictures are remarkable for so surprising a wealth of detail. The cha

of plants, animals, and natural scenery. His eager mind employed itself with the whys and wherefores of things, not satisfied with the simple pleasure that sight bestows. In his engravings, even more than

more lavishly than did the citizens of any other town in Germany. After a boyhood and youth spent at Augsburg, Holbein removed to Basle. He was a designer of wood-engravings and goldsmiths work and of architectural decoration, besides being a painter. In those days of change in South Germany, artists had to be willing to turn their hands to any kind of work they could get to do. North of the Alps, where the Reformation was upsetting old habits, an ar

f Death, as well as drawing another set to illustrate The Praise of Folly, written by Erasmus, who was then living in Basle and frequenting the house of Froben. Erasmus was a typical scholar of the sixteenth century, belonging rather to civilized society as a whole than to any one country. He moved about Europe from one centre of learning to another, alike a

t a painter from Flanders or Germany if it were possible. So Erasmus advised Holbein to go to England, and gave him a letter to Sir Thomas More. On this first visit in 1526, he painted the portraits of More and his whole family, and of many other distinguished men; but it was not till his second visit in 1532 that he became Henry VIII.'s court painter. In this capacity he had to decorate the walls of the King's palaces, design the pageantry of the Royal processions, and paint the portraits of the K

nce of Wales. It belongs to the end of the year 1538, when he was just fifteen months old, and the imagination of Holbein equipped him with the orb of sover

OF WALES, AFTER

n, in the Collection of th

at he wanted, you will understand that his demands upon his court painter for a portrait of his only son and heir must have been high. No o

slation of the Latin po

Father's virtu

arth with him m

m might Heav

her's fame shou

equal such a

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s him, thou sh

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anslated by Mis

ich royal infants were treated in those days,-we read that at the time this picture was painted, the little prince had a household of his own, consisting of a lady-mistress, a nurse, rockers for his cradle, a chamberlain, vice-chamberlain, steward, comptroller,

cacy of modelling, and richness of colour almost southern. His pictures appeal more to the eye and less to the mind than do those of Dürer. Where Dürer sought to instruct, Holbein was content to please. But like a German he spared no pains. He painted the stuff and the necklace, the globe and the feather, with the finish of an artist who was before all things a good workman. Observe how delicately the chubby little fingers are drawn. Holbein's detailed

adays. His sitters were generally busy men who granted him but one sitting, so that his method was to make a drawing of the head in red chalk and to write upon the ma

But when he came to paint the portrait he was not satisfied with a mere likeness. He painted too 'his habit as he lived.' Erasmus is shown reading in his study, the merchant in his office surrounded by the tokens of his business, and Henry VIII. standing firmly with his legs wide apart as if bestriding a hemisph