His portrait of the last is one of the
greatest portraits ever painted. Some competent critics consider it the
greatest. It is so real, so human, that we might be well content, if one
in twenty of the actual men we meet were half as real and human; and it
expresses, with equal strength and subtilty, the large and noble nature
of the man. Holbein was a great colorist, and imitated all the rich
and tender hues of Nature, in their delicate and almost imperceptible
gradations, with a minute truthfulness which is quite marvellous.
This being the character of his mind, it would hardly be supposed that
he could produce such a work as the great Dance of Death, which has
caused all others to be forgotten, except by antiquarians. For this
Dance is the most remarkable embodiment in Art of that fantastic and
grotesque idealism which has found its best expression in the works of
German poets and painters; and the preeminence of Holbein's over all the
other representations of the same subject consists in this,--that, while
they are but a dull and formal succession of mere costumed figures
seized by a corpse and shrinking away from its touch, Holbein's groups
are instinct with life, character, and emotion.
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