ush, he went first to Lucerne, where the evidence goes to
show that he apparently thought of settling instead of at Basel,--and
then on beyond it. And it seems highly probable that at this time he
pushed on over the Alps and made his way into Italy,--already the Mecca
of every artist.

Here he could not now, in 1517, have hoped to see either Bramante or
Leonardo da Vinci in person. The former had died at Rome two years
before; but, without getting even as far as Pavia, Milan could show some
splendid monuments to his sojourn within her walls; characteristic
examples of that architecture of the closing fifteenth century which
Holbein loved as Bramante himself. Leonardo was now in France; but in
the refectory of the Santa Maria Monastery was his immortal, though,
alas! not imperishable, masterpiece--"The Last Supper." Time had not
yet taught Leonardo, much less Holbein, the fleeting nature of mural
oil-painting; the only so-called "fresco" painting which the latter ever
attempted, so far as is known. But the great Supper was still glowing in
all the splendour of its original painting, and would impress itself
indelibly on an eye such as Holbein's. In more than one cathedral, too,
as he wandered in such a holiday, he would have noted how Mantegna had
made its architecture the background for his own individual genius.

At any rate each of these, somehow and somewhere, set its own seal upon
the reverent heart of Holbein at about this time. Whether through their
original works or copies of them,--already familiar to Augsburg as
well as Lucerne,--the lad sat humbly at the feet of both Leonardo and
Mantegna. By the first, beside many a loftier lesson, he was confirmed
and strengthened in his native respect for accurate studies of the living
world around him. From the second he learned a still deeper scorn of
"pretty" art. Yet though he sat at their feet, it was as no servile
disciple. He would fain be taught by them; fain follow them in all
humility and frankness. But it was in order to expand his own powers,
not to surrender them; to speak his own thoughts the better, not theirs,
nor another's.

And, in any event, on such a journey Lucerne must come first. And that
he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown
by his having joined in this year 1517, the Guild of St. Luke, the
Painters' Guild of Lucerne, then but newly organised. "Master Hans
Holbein has given one Gulden," reads the old entry. Two other it