uble for this
office. And it seems likely that the addition to his mitre of the figure
of St. Nicholas was Gerster's wish, in order to specially associate the
name-saint of his friend--Nicholas von Diesbach--with this intercession.
It is assumed by those who have patiently unearthed these details of
circumstantial evidence, that the beggar is introduced to mark the
identity of the boundlessly charitable Bishop of Tours. But I venture to
suggest still another reason: this is, that in the uplifted, pleading
face of the mendicant, whose expression of appeal and humility is a
striking bit of realism in these ideal surroundings, we may have the
actual portrait of the donor, Hans Gerster himself. That this should be
so would be in strict accord with the methods of the period. There is a
striking parallel which will occur to all who are familiar with the St.
Elizabeth in the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich. Here the undoubted
portrait of Hans Holbein the elder is seen as the beggar in the
background.

It is, as has been said, a marvellous story by which this glorious
painting,--in which the introduction of the patron-saint of Solothurn
proves that it was created for one of her own altars,--was completely
lost to her, and to the very histories of Art, and then returned to the
city for which it was originally destined; all by a chain of seemingly
unrelated accidents. But only the skeleton of that story can be given
here.[4]

In all probability this Madonna was executed for the altar of the ancient
Lady Chapel of the Solothurn Cathedral. A hundred and twenty-six years
after it was painted, this chapel was pulled down, to be replaced by a
totally different style of architecture; and as the picture was then
smoke-stained and "old-fashioned" it would in all likelihood drop into
some lumber-room. At all events, it must have become the property of the
Cathedral choirmaster,--one Hartmann,--after another five-and-thirty
years. For at this time he built, and soon after endowed, the little
village church of Allerheiligen, on the outskirts of the industrial town
of Grenchen, which lies at the southern foot of the Jura.

_Facilis descensus!_ Another turn of the centuries' wheel and the gift
of this chapel's founder was once again thought unworthy of the altar to
which it had been presented. When Herr Zetter of Solothurn first saw it
in the queer little Allerheiligen chapel, it hung high up on the choir
wall; blackened, worm-eaten, w