But although he fled from his wife, he painted her portrait; and we need
no testimony to warrant the likeness. She is the very type of one of
those meek shrews, alternately a martyr and a fury, that drive a man to
madness when they speak and to despair when they are silent. We might
reasonably wonder that he would paint so vivid a representation of that
which he so sedulously shunned. But poor Hans, who probably had some
lingering remains of his early love, knew, that, although he should
make a speaking likeness, it would be a silent one, and that this Frau
Holbein must keep the look which he chose to summon to her face. That,
indeed, was knowledge that was power! How he must have chuckled as he
saw his wife looking at him more natural than life and yet without the
power to worry him! His own portrait shows us a broad, good-natured,
ruddy face, in which we see marks of talent when we know that it is
Holbein's. But in spite of its strength, its bronze, and its beard, it
has a somewhat sad and subdued air; and its heavy-lidded, pensive eyes
look deprecatingly at a Frau Holbein in the distance.
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