, too! Let him take his price
and buy himself a rope long enough to house his soul in any Hell, rather
than sit on in this one! It is all painted, or was once; all written on
that sunken cheek, that matted hair and clammy brow; in that cavernous
socket, that eye of lurid despair; on the whole anatomy of a lost soul.
The hand that did it was very young, very immature; but it had the youth
and the immaturity of a Master.

There is another and a very different work, an oil painting, in the
Royal Collection at Lisbon, signed IOANNES HOLBEIN FECIT 1519, which,
if by the younger Hans, would almost put the question as to whether
the painter knew the landscapes of Italy, beyond doubt; so southern is
the type of its background. The work, however, has been rejected by
Woltmann, on the strength of an old photograph not quite perfect. He
held the signature to be spurious, and attributed the picture to the
school of Gerard David. And he gave to the work the name by which it is
now generally styled in English works: "The Fountain of Life" (_Der
Brunnen des Lebens_[3]). He did so from the inscription within the rim
of the well immediately in the foreground; but a literal translation of
this inscription, PVTEVS AQVARVM VIVENCIVM, is, I think, to be
preferred: _The Well of Living Waters_.

The majority of those competent to form a judgment in such matters are
inclined to attribute the work to Hans Holbein the Elder, who did not
die until some years later, and who made use of a very similar form of
signature. And for myself I find it hard to see how anyone familiar
with Hans the Younger could accept it as his work at any period of
his career; least of all at the date given in the signature. So that
equally whether Woltmann is right in believing the signature itself
spurious, or those are right who hold it to be the genuine signature of
Hans the Elder,--a more detailed description of the composition does not
fall within the scope of this little volume. But the whole matter is
most clearly set forth, and a very beautiful reproduction in colours
given of the painting itself, in Herr Seeman's article upon it, which
will be found in the appended List of References.

* * * * *

Considerably before 1519, as has been said, Holbein had begun to
develop his special genius for Design, and to apply it to glass or
window-paintings, as well as to metal and wood-engravings. The beautiful
drawings, whether washed, or e