VOL. I., PLATE 37. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN, POSSIBLY HOLBEIN’S WIFE ROYAL PICTURE GALLERY, MAURITSHUIS, THE HAGUE ] [Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S PORTRAIT OF HIS WIFE] In the head of the Madonna, although Holbein has idealised and spiritualised his model, can be traced the predominant features of his wife as shown in the portrait he painted of her with their two children some seven years later, after his return from England to Basel in 1528, though the face in the latter painting has become coarsened and bears the marks of care and even sorrow, and has little in common with the beautiful Solothurn head. The latter more closely resembles the very fine portrait of a young woman in the Hague Gallery (No. 275) (Pl. 37),[239] which is now regarded by some critics as a likeness of Holbein’s wife, painted just before or immediately after he married her, in the earliest part of his second Basel period. This picture is one of the strayed waifs from the royal collections of England, for it is branded on the back with the crown and “C.R.,” which denote that it was once in the possession of Charles I, in whose catalogue it was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It appears afterwards to have been in the Arundel Collection, and is most probably the portrait described in the 1655 inventory as “ritratto della Moglie de Holbein,” which, after the death of the Countess of Arundel, must have been sold in Amsterdam, and purchased by some Dutch collector. It fetched 65 florins at the Joan de Vries sale in 1738, and was afterwards in the G. van Slingelandt and the William V of Orange collections. It is evidently not one of the pictures taken over to Holland by William III during one of his visits to the Hague, as has been suggested, for there is nothing to show that it ever returned to the English royal collections, nor is it included in the list of works unsuccessfully reclaimed by Queen Anne from the Dutch States when she ascended the throne. Holbein’s authorship of this work has been frequently disputed, some writers regarding it as a good old copy after a lost original by the master, while others look upon it as a fine original work by some Netherlandish contemporary of Holbein’s who was strongly under his influence. Dr. Woltmann considered it to be most probably by Holbein himself, and others have followed him in this opinion. Dr. Ganz, in his recent book, includes it among the genuine works of the second Basel period, and points out that the soft, tender colour-scheme in which it has been carried out was the result of Holbein’s recent visit to Italy, and explains its earlier attribution to Leonardo.[240] When allowance is made for the passage of time, and the troubles and cares which are supposed to have embittered Elsbeth Holbein’s life, there is considerable likeness between this portrait of a comely young _haus-frau_ and the wife in the portrait of 1528-9. This