The picture was commissioned by Hans Gerster, town archivist of Basel, who was not a native of that city, but whose wife, Barbara Guldenknopf, was a member of a local family. Among Gerster’s official duties was that of conducting negotiations with the councils of neighbouring towns, and, after Basel had entered the Swiss confederation in 1501, one of the places to which his official duties frequently took him was Solothurn. There he became a close friend of the Coadjutor Nikolaus von Diesbach, dean of Solothurn Minster, whom he made his spiritual adviser. Circumstances seem to indicate that in 1522 Gerster was under some suspicion as to illegal dealings in the Imperial interests, which eventually brought about his dismissal from office, at about the same time as the fall of that other early patron of Holbein, Jakob Meyer, who lost his seat in the Council through similar causes. It has been suggested, therefore, that the picture was ordered for the Solothurn Minster on the advice of the Coadjutor, in expiation of Gerster’s irregular conduct. For the same reason, according to those who hold that the saintly figure on the left represents the Bishop of Tours, St. Martin was chosen as the particular saint to whom all sinners made appeal, and was introduced as intercessor for the donor, while the kneeling beggar may even be a portrait of the archivist himself. The chasuble the saint wears is the one specially prescribed for this office, while the figure of St. Nicholas on the mitre may have been placed there in order to associate the donor’s friend, Nikolaus von Diesbach, with the intercession. It is possible that the picture was a commission for the St. Nicholas Chapel of the Minster, founded in 1520, for the presence of St. Ursus, Solothurn’s patron saint, proves that it was intended for that place.[246] As the years went by, it suffered from neglect, and the name of the master who had painted it was forgotten, so that when, in 1648, this chapel was pulled down and rebuilt, the picture was regarded as of not sufficient value or beauty to be rehung over its altar. Between 1689 and 1717 it came into the possession of a certain Canon Hartmann, the Minster choirmaster, who in 1683 built and endowed the little chapel of All Saints on the heights above Grenchen, to which he presented or bequeathed the picture. Here, again, it does not appear to have been regarded as a work of any particular importance, and the process of neglect and deterioration continued; and when, in 1864, it was rediscovered by Herr Franz Anton Zetter of Solothurn, in the same small church, it was hanging high up on the wall of the choir, blackened with the smoke of more than two hundred years, its panels worm-eaten, without a frame, and suspended by a cord through two holes which had been bored into the picture itself. Although it was impossible to examine it closely, Herr Zetter was struck with its beauty, still to be