zum Himmel_) which his brother Ambrose had joined two
years earlier and from which he seems to have passed to the veritable
guild of Heaven at about this latter date.

And hardly is the ink dry upon the record of his membership than Holbein
painted one of the most beautiful of his portraits--that of Bonifacius
Amerbach (Plate 6). He stands beside a tree on which is hung an
inscription. Behind him is Holbein's favourite early background,--the
blue of the sky, here broken by the warm brown and green of the branch,
and the faint glimpse of far-away mountains. Under his soft cap, with
a cross for badge, his intensely gleaming blue eyes look out beneath
grave brows. The lips are softly yet firmly set; the mouth framed by the
sunny beard which repeats the red-brown of his hair. The black scholar's
gown, with its trimming of black fur, discloses his rich damask doublet
and white collar.

Illustration: PLATE 6
BONIFACIUS AMERBACH
_Oils. Basel Museum_

Well may the inscription assert--above the signature, the name of the
sitter and the date 14th October, 1519--

_"Though but a painted face I am not far removed from Life; but rather,
By truthful lines, the noble image of my Possessor.
As he accomplishes eight times three years, so faithfully in me also
Is Nature's work proclaimed by the work of Art."_

For here in truth is a work of Nature which is no less a work of Art.

This is the Amerbach who began and inspired his son Basilius (so named
after Bonifacius's brother) to complete the Holbein Collection, which
the Basel Museum bought long afterwards. And such was the love of
both that they included, perhaps deliberately, much that has small
probability of claim to be Holbein's work. They would reject nothing
attributed to him; thinking a bushel of chaff well worth housing if it
might yield one genuine grain. And in view of these expressive facts, it
is hardly necessary to argue in behalf of the tradition that more than a
conventional friendship bound the two young men together,--printer's son
and painter's son, musician-scholar and scholar-painter, Churchman and
Churchman; the one twenty-four, the other twenty-two.

Bonifacius was the youngest of Johann Amerbach's three gifted sons. As
all the world knows, Johann had been also a scholar as well as a printer,
and great in both capacities. The most eminent scholars of his day
gravitated as naturally to this noble personality as they afterwards did
to that o