he had not as yet carried out his intention. In 1543 a pestilence broke out in London, to which Holbein fell a victim between 7 Oct. and 29 Nov. of that year. On the former date he made a hasty will (see Archæologia, xxxix. l), administration of which was granted on the latter date to a legatee, the goldsmith, John of Antwerp. Holbein lived in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, and was rated there as a stranger, showing that he was not a permanent resident in England. He is supposed to have been buried in the church of St. Katherine Cree. He mentions in his will two children at nurse, who must have been illegitimate, as he had by his wife Elsbeth two sons, Jakob and Philipp, and two daughters, Margaret and Cunigunde, who were grown up at Basle at the time of his death, while his wife survived him till 1549. Holbein left no pupils, having had no fixed residence, or intention to remain permanently in England.
Holbein has claims to rank as one of the best portrait-painters in the world. He combined artistic beauty and precision of technical execution with extraordinary truth to nature and power of interpretation of character. He was most careful in his treatment of accessories, making free use of real gold, yet they never intrude on the composition; every detail in the hands, ears, &c., was carefully elaborated, yet producing complete unity and harmony in the whole. He usually made an outline drawing in chalk on paper, with notes of costume and accessories; this he traced or copied on to a panel, and then painted the portrait over it, a method which probably saved many sittings. He was fond of a pale greenish blue back-ground, which strengthened the outline of the face. He was very minute in his execution, and painted small medallion pictures to fit into round ivory boxes; hence he became one of the earliest painters of portraits in miniature, which he is said to have learnt from his contemporary, Lucas Horembault. At Windsor there are miniatures of, besides Catherine Howard, the two sons of the Duke of Suffolk, and Lady Audley (also drawing). He also painted Anne of Cleves in miniature. In his miscellaneous drawings, scattered about in public collections, Holbein shows the same general excellence. The drawings of jewellery and other ornaments in the museum at Basle and in the print room at the British Museum show him to have been experienced in the goldsmith's craft, and the two drawings in the latter collection, of a clock (for Sir Anthony Denny) and a chimney-piece for one of the royal palaces, with the design for the so-called ‘Jane Seymour’ cup in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, show his powers of executing ornamental works on a larger scale. In his drawings of domestic life he shows a sense of humour and of human feeling which appeals to all ages.
Holbein drew his own portrait at various times. A coloured drawing at Basle shows him at the age of twenty-three, and a portrait at the age of thirty-six is in a private collection at Vienna. A circular portrait, done in the last year of his life, cannot be safely traced; there is a drawing of it in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, and a similar portrait, when in the Arundel collection, was engraved by Hollar and by Vorsterman. A similar portrait was formerly in the Strawberry Hill collection, and is now in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch; other versions exist elsewhere. The so-called portraits of Holbein and his wife at Windsor have no claim to represent them; they are, moreover, painted on canvas, and signed by Hans Bock, a later painter at Basle. No artist's name has been so frequently and so wilfully misused in England as that of Hans Holbein. Very few authentic portraits by him remain in England. Among the many which bear his name, none can safely be considered authentic, in addition to those already mentioned, except the anonymous portrait of a man in the collection of Sir J. E. Millais, and the exquisite small square portrait of Henry VIII at Althorp.
[Woltmann's Holbein und seine Zeit, 2 vol. edition, 1874; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie; Wornum's Life and Works of Holbein; P. Mantz's Hans Holbein; Carel van Mander's Livre des Peintres, ed. Hymans, 1884; Th. von Liebenau's Hans Holbein d. J. Fresken am Hertenstein Hause in Luzern; Archæologia, xxxix. 1, xl. 71 sq.; Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, ii. 162, 312, v. 179, x. 345; Zahn's Jahrbücher für Kunstwissenschaft, i. 185, iii. 113, iv. 75, 186, 209, 223, 251, v. 54, 141, 193; Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, vi. 116, vii. 35, x. 315, xvi. 99, xxiii. 302; The Portfolio, xiii. 12, &c.; Gazette des Beaux-Arts, April 1869, December 1871; Cat. of the Tudor Exhibition, 1890; E. His's Dessins d'Ornements d'Hans Holbein.]
HOLBORNE, ANTHONY (fl. 1597), musical composer, was possibly a member of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel Royal. He published: 1. ‘The Cittharn Schoole,’ printed by Peter Short, London, 1597, with a dedication to Thomas, lord Burgh, baron Gainsburgh, and an address to the ‘proficient scholler or lover of the cittharn.’ It contains (Grove, Dict. i. 743) thirty-two preludes, pavans, galliards, popular song tunes, &c., for the cithern alone, in tablature; twenty-three others for the cithern with an accompaniment, in ordinary notation, for the bass viol; and another two for the cithern with
