At this time the artist was receiving a salary of £30 a year from the King in the form of a retaining fee, and he must have obtained further payment for whatever work he did. His money was paid quarterly, but he was occasionally granted a whole year’s salary in advance. In the autumn of the same year, 1538, he made a second journey abroad, to Upper Burgundy, for which he received £10 from the King’s purse, probably to obtain a second sitting from the Duchess. He took this opportunity of paying a flying visit to Basle, no doubt to talk over with the Town Council an offer they had just made him of a pension of fifty gulden, with leave of absence in England for two years longer, if he would then return to his native city and settle there. He remained in Basle for only a few days during December, and was received with enthusiasm by his fellow-citizens. He most probably returned to England by way of Paris, where he stopped to apprentice his eldest son Philip to the goldsmith Jerome David. Whatever agreement he may have made with the Swiss authorities, he did not visit Basle again during the five remaining years of his life. He was back in London on New Year’s Day, 1539, and presented a portrait of the young Prince Edward to the King. In August, 1539, he was again sent abroad upon a similar mission. He went to Düren, in the Duchy of Cleves, to paint the daughters of the Duke, a Protestant Prince, with whom, since the negotiations with the Emperor for Christina’s hand had come to nothing, Cromwell thought an alliance would be politic. The likeness Holbein made of _Anne of Cleves_, probably the fine one now in the Louvre, is said by tradition to have so flattered the lady that Henry consented to marry her, with the well-known disastrous results. With the exception of a miniature at Windsor, there is no authentic portrait of _Catherine Howard_, whom the King married as soon as he had divorced the unfortunate Anne; but her uncle, _Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk_, the Lord High Admiral, was painted by him more than once. Holbein had now become the most popular portrait painter of the day, and his commissions were very numerous. It is impossible to give a complete list of them here, but the principal ones will be found in the Appendix. At Windsor Castle is the magnificent collection of chalk drawings of heads, over eighty in number, which includes portraits of many of the most illustrious people of the day. These were preliminary studies for portraits, and are the finest record we possess of the celebrities of the Tudor period, invaluable both historically and artistically. In them Holbein is seen at his finest as a delineator of character.