painting for which it was a study it is natural to suppose that the architectural setting would have been as elaborate as in the “Holy Family,” which it resembles in its low horizon-line. VOL. I., PLATE 34. [Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY _Washed drawing on a red ground_ BASEL GALLERY ] There is a third drawing, in the Städtisches Museum, Leipzig, which belongs to the same period as the two just described, and has many points in common with them.[226] It is a pen drawing heightened with white on a dark grey ground, and represents the Madonna seated on a stone bench over which her cloak is spread, supporting the Infant Christ in his first attempts to walk. The Child, with one arm and leg uplifted, is laughing with delight, and the attitude of the Virgin, with head bent down, and her long hair blown on one side as though by a breeze, is one of great beauty. In this arrangement of the hair, though more free, and in the type of the Madonna’s face, though more beautiful, this drawing bears a close resemblance to the more elaborate of the two in the Amerbach Collection. It is signed and dated “H. H.” and “1519” on two panels on either side of the carpet or pavement beneath the Virgin’s feet, and was possibly made shortly after Holbein’s return from Lucerne to Basel. It is a most sympathetic and natural study of maternal love and the happiness of childhood, and has a grace and charm which the two other drawings, made at about the same date, do not possess in the same degree.[227] [Sidenote: THE “DEAD CHRIST IN THE TOMB”]