old inscription reading 1500, we must date this portrait after that Venetian visit which brought to Dürer new power and self-confidence.

EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I

By Dürer. In the Imperial Gallery, Vienna.

Efficiency was the trait Dürer most admired. His merchant friend Hieronymus Holzschuher possessed this quality in a high degree, as his portrait shows. He still directs toward an admiring world the bluest, brightest, steadiest eyes ever painted. The silvery hair and beard glisten like a halo before a blue sky. The firm, thin lips under the scant, well kept mustache still tell of the sagacity and persistence that won for Hieronymus a fortune and the mayoralty of a proud city. Nor is this power and rectitude without kindness. One feels the living presence of a man absolutely just, but also quick to see another man’s side, and withal humorous. Of an old age not too frosty and wholly vigorous, this picture is a most remarkable embodiment. That Dürer’s genius is as marked in a slight sketch as in elaborately executed works, witness the charcoal study which he did of his old mother just before her death. Have a few lines ever told more piteously of resigned decrepitude?

THE FOUR APOSTLES

In his last years Dürer painted as a legacy to his native town the stately figures of the apostles Paul, Mark, Peter, and John. Already the Protestant movement which he held so dear was breaking up into wrangling sects. Dürer wished to recall men to the founts of Christian wisdom and unity. The apostles wear their grand robes with Roman dignity. The heads are sharply distinguished by temperament. The burning determination of Saint Paul is very unlike the excitability of Saint Mark; the inward serenity of Saint John most unlike the careworn pensiveness of Saint Peter. These are men to move a world.

On the 6th of April, 1528, he passed away, only fifty-seven years old, but exhausted by constant effort. The great bankers, merchants, scholars, and craftsmen of Nuremberg knew that a notable citizen had gone. He had known familiarly Melanchthon and Luther. Raphael had been glad to exchange drawings with him. His engravings and woodcuts were admired throughout Europe. After four centuries he remains the finest exemplar in art of the peculiar steadfastness and thoroughness of the German race. Goethe, the greatest of German poets, has written the finest tribute to Germany’s greatest artist:

HANS HOLBEIN

HOLBEIN’S WIFE AND CHILDREN

In Basel Museum.

PORTRAIT OF GEORG GYZE. By Holbein. In the Berlin Gallery.

HOLBEIN, by himself

At 25 years of age.

Whoever understands the art of Dürer needs little introduction to that of Holbein (hole´-bine). Hans Holbein was born in 1497, when Dürer was just beginning to be