which is cut in a lofty rock, in the fissures of which trees and bushes are growing, while some way off the Virgin and others with her stand overcome with grief. The whole composition of this altar-piece shows the influence of Holbein’s Italian visit in more ways than one; and in it he has abandoned to a very great extent the earlier practice of his country in the figures of his soldiers, who are no longer dressed in the German costume of his day, but in the Roman helmet and accoutrements such as he must have seen in contemporary Italian pictures, more particularly those of Mantegna. Although the types of some of the heads are distinctly German, recalling similar heads in his father’s pictures and his own earlier works, the predominating influence is Italian. At about the time of his visit to Italy Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari were at work together upon the screen for the ancona in the chapel of Sant’ Abbondio in the cathedral at Como, and it is suggested, not only that Holbein must have studied this, and earlier works by the two Italian masters in the same building, such as the great altar-piece in the Sant’ Abbondio Chapel now regarded as largely Ferrari’s work, and the beautiful altar-piece by Luini in the neighbouring chapel of St. Jerome, but that possibly he also entered the studio of one or the other of them for a short period. Reminiscences of Ferrari in particular can be traced in this and other sacred paintings produced by Holbein at about this time.[214] For his background motives he appears to have made use in some instances of buildings close at hand; in others traces of his journey over the Alps can be seen. Thus, in the “Scourging” the setting recalls the Romanesque architecture of the neighbouring church of Othmarsheim, that of the “Mocking” the interior of the cathedral of Basel, while the round tower in the “Cross-Bearing” resembles the flanking towers to one of the gates of the same city.[215]