Though a realist, he was sensible of the dignity and severity of religious painting. His colour had almost all the richness and sweetness of the Venetians. But he had fallen on evil times, as the next few years undoubtedly showed. Amongst the portraits which he executed in these years are those of Froben, the publisher, known only by copies at Basel and Hampton Court, and Erasmus, who sat in 1523, as he likewise did in 1530, in various positions, showing his face threequarters as at Longford, Basel, Turin, Parma, the Hague and Vienna, and in profile as in the Louvre or at Hampton Court. Besides these, Holbein made designs for glass windows, and for woodcuts, including subjects of every sort, from the Virgin and Child with saints of the old time to the Dance of Death, from gospel incidents extracted from Luther's Bible to satirical pieces illustrating the sale of indulgences and other abuses denounced by Reformers. Holbein, in this way, was carried irresistibly with the stream of the Reformation, in which, it must now be admitted, the old traditions of religious painting were wrecked, leaving nothing behind but unpictorial elements which Cranach and his school vainly used for pictorial purposes. Once only, after 1526, and after he had produced the "Lais" and "Venus and Amor," did Holbein with impartial spirit give his services and pencil to the Roman Catholic cause. The burgomaster Meyer, whose patronage he had already enjoyed, now asked him to represent himself and his wives and children in prayer before the Virgin; and Holbein produced the celebrated altarpiece now in the palace of Prince William of Hesse at Darmstadt, the shape and composition of which are known to all the world by its copy in the Dresden museum. The drawings for this masterpiece are amongst the most precious relics in the museum of Basel. The time now came when art began to suffer from unavoidable depression in all countries north of the Alps. Holbein, at Basel, was reduced to accept the smallest commissions--even for scutcheons. Then he saw that his chances were dwindling to nothing, and taking a bold resolution, armed with letters of introduction from Erasmus to More, he crossed the Channel to England, where in the one-sided branch of portrait painting he found an endless circle of clients. Eighty-seven drawings by Holbein in Windsor Castle, containing an equal number of portraits, of persons chiefly of high quality, testify to his industry in the years which divide 1528 from 1543. They are all originals of pictures that are still extant, or sketches for pictures that were lost or never carried out. Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems to have had a very friendly connexion, sat to him for likenesses of various kinds. The drawing of his head is at Windsor. A pen-and-ink sketch, in which we see More surrounded by all the members of his family, is now in the gallery of Basel, and numerous copies of a picture from it prove how popular the lost original must once have been.