He gave out, at first, that his absence from Bale would be
temporary,--only for the purpose of raising the value of his works, by
making them more difficult to obtain. Before he went, he finished and
sent home a portrait on which he was engaged. It was one of his best
pictures; and the person for whom it was painted, lost for a while in
admiration of its beauty, noticed at last that a fly, which had settled
upon the forehead, remained there motionless. He stepped up to brush the
insect away, and found that it was a part of the picture. This story
has, since Holbein's time, been told of many painters,--among others, of
Benjamin West. Such a piece of mere imitation should have added nothing
to the reputation of a painter of Holbein's powers; but the story was
soon told all over Bale, and orders were given to prevent the loss
to the city of so great an artist. But Holbein had quietly gone off,
furnished with letters of introduction from Erasmus, who wrote in one of
them that in Bale the arts were chilled; which might well be true of a
place where so much ado was made about the painting of a fly.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49