child, the
son he called Philip, was born; and he painted an altar-piece which is
in some respects the most beautiful of his extant works. The latter--now
in the Solothurn Museum, and therefore called the "Solothurn Madonna"
(Plate 12)--has had one of the most extraordinary histories to be found
in the records of art.

Illustration: PLATE 12
THE SOLOTHURN, OR ZETTER'SCHE, MADONNA
_Oils. Solothurn Museum_

The background of this picture,--a massive arch of grey sandstone
supported by iron stanchions,--was evidently designed to suit the
surrounding architecture of some grey-walled ancient structure. On a
dais covered with a green carpet, patterned in white and red and
emblazoned with the arms of the donor and his wife, sits the lovely
Madonna with the Child held freely yet firmly in two of the most
exquisite hands which even Holbein ever painted. Her dress is a rich
rose-red; her symbolical mantle of universal Motherhood, or "Grace," is
a most beautiful ultramarine, loaded in the shadows and like a sapphire
in its lights. The flowing gold of her hair shimmers under its filmy
veil, and the jewels in her gold crown flash below the great white
pearls that tip its points. Where the sky-background approaches Mother
and Child, its azure tone is lost in a pure effulgence of light; as if
the very ether were suffused with the sense of the Divine.

The Child is drawn and painted superbly. The carnations are exquisite;
the gravity of infancy is not exaggerated, yet fittingly enforces the
gesture of benediction. The left hand is turned outward in a movement so
peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation
and nature. The little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled
sole a bit of inimitable painting. But perhaps most wonderful of all is
the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the Child is the
centre of interest as well as of the picture. How it is so, is Holbein's
own secret.

To right and left of the Virgin stand two fine types of spiritual and
temporal authority. Behind and at her right, almost hidden by the
amplitude of her mantle, kneels a poor wretch who is introduced here by
some necessity of the commission itself, but is skilfully prevented from
obtruding his needs on the serene beauty of the scene. Dropping gold
into his alms-bowl with a hand effectively contrasted with his brown
thumb, stands "the sinner's saint"--the good Bishop of Tours; while some
other condition