Hans Holbein the younger seems to have received no artistic training except that which he gained in his father’s studio or workshop, where his elder brother Ambrosius was also engaged. His uncle Sigismund, too, was an Augsburg painter, and may have helped in his instruction. His father, though constantly in debt and difficulties, seems to have received numerous orders for altar-pieces and other sacred pictures, so that the workshop was a busy one, and no doubt young Hans began at an early age to help in such minor details as the painting of draperies and backgrounds. Much of his genius was inherited from his father, particularly that remarkable power of portraying character with a few vivid strokes of the pencil which is one of the crowning glories of his art. In those days a young painter generally finished his education by a year or two of travel before settling down as a master painter in the guild of his native town. Ambrose and Hans Holbein seem to have followed the prevailing fashion, leaving Augsburg towards the end of 1514 or early in 1515. In the latter year the father went to Issenheim in High Alsace to paint an altar-piece, and the two young men may have gone with him. There is some probability, too, that the whole family settled in Lucerne about this time. In any case, the two sons were residing in Basle before the end of 1515, any plan of extended travel being cut short by the prospect of plenty of work. At that time Basle was the northern centre of the great revival of literature and learning, and several of its printers were of European reputation. Many of the chief works of the leading humanist writers were first published in Basle, and decorated with woodcut illustrations and ornamental title-pages and borders. The prospect of employment upon “black-and-white” work of this kind was, no doubt, one of the chief attractions which brought the two young painters to the town. Nor were they disappointed, for shortly after their arrival a commission was given to them by Johann Froben, Erasmus’s publisher, and the principal printer of the city. It is not unlikely that the young men first of all entered the workshop of some Basle painter, such as that of Hans Herbster, whose portrait was painted in 1516 by one of the two brothers. Until recently this picture was in the collection of the Earl of Northbrook, and ascribed to Hans, but since its acquisition by the Basle Museum it has been attributed to Ambrose. The latter, of whose work we know very little, seems to have been an artist of only moderate capabilities. He joined the Painters’ Guild in Basle in 1517, and, as no record of him has been found later than 1519, he is supposed to have died young.