his invariable rule for portraits in oils, Holbein
first made a careful drawing of each head on the same scale as the
finished picture, carrying it out with great freedom but at the same
time with astonishing care and finish. So that his studies for portraits
are themselves works of art, sometimes invested with even more spirit
than the oil painting, which was never made direct from the living
model,--at any rate, until ready for the finishing touches. Drawn with
a point which could give a line as bold or as almost impalpable as he
wished, and modelled to the very texture of the surfaces, the carnations
are so sufficiently indicated or rendered with red chalk as to serve
every purpose. Sometimes notes are also added. Thus in the upper corner
of the drawing for Meyer's head the artist has noted "eyebrows lighter
than the hair" in his microscopic yet firm writing.

With these fine portraits, painted as if united by the same architectural
background, Holbein began a friendship of many years. After some four
centuries it is not possible to produce written records of such ties
except in occasional corroborative details. But neither is it possible
to mistake the painted records of repeated commissions. While as the
lifelong leader of the Catholic party in Basel, it was natural that
Meyer zum Hasen should have much in common with a painter who all his
life held firmly to his friendships with the most conspicuous champions
of that party.

Johann Froben was another of these; and from 1515 until Froben's death
eleven years later Holbein had more and more to do for this printer.
Occasionally, too, he drew for other Basel printers; but not often. The
eighty-two sketches on the margins of that priceless copy of the _Praise
of Folly_, which Basel preserves in her Museum, had been suited to their
company. Admirable, though unequal, as are their merits, they _are_
sketches, whose chief beauty is their happy spontaneity. Such things are
among the trifles of art, and are not to be put into the scales at all
with the finished perfection of his serious designs for wood engraving.
These were drawn on the block; and even these cannot properly represent
the drawing itself except when cut by some such master hand as his own.
Since in preparing the design for printing the background is cut away,
leaving the composition itself in lines of relief,--it follows that
everything, so far as the reproduction is concerned, must depend upon
the cleannes