discerned through all the discoloration and damage, and when, shortly afterwards, he heard that the chapel was being renovated, he made anxious inquiries as to its fate. For some time all search for it proved unavailing, but in the end it was found, face downward, and splashed all over with whitewash, under the boards which formed the workmen’s platform. He was only just in time to save it from final destruction. Upon examination he discovered the signature, and feeling convinced, in spite of scepticism on the part of others whom he consulted, that it was a genuine work of the master’s, he purchased it. It was placed in the hands of Eigner, the keeper of the Augsburg Gallery, for restoration, the work occupying three years. The state of the picture was so bad that restoration was essential, and this, on the whole, was well done, though it suffered to some extent during the process. There is, however, a seventeenth-century copy of the picture in existence, which shows that the restorer substituted yellow for red in the Virgin’s right sleeve, which does not harmonise with Holbein’s original colour-scheme. Herr Zetter presented the picture to the Gallery of his native town, where it now occupies the place of honour, so that, thanks to his acumen and enthusiasm, one of Holbein’s finest achievements in sacred painting has been saved from oblivion.[247] In composition the Solothurn Madonna bears close resemblance to a large woodcut, designed by Holbein, on the back of the title-page of the Statute Book or Town Laws of Freiburg-im-Breisgau.[248] This book, _The Municipal Laws and Statutes of the Praiseworthy Town of Freiburg_, by Ulrich Zasius, was published in Basel by Adam Petri in 1520. The Virgin is seated enthroned in front of a niche of Renaissance design. In her attitude, and the way in which she holds the Child on her knees, as well as in her dress and her long hair falling on her shoulders, there is considerable likeness to the altar-piece, as also in the two figures of the patron saints of Freiburg who stand on either side of her, St. George, with one hand resting on his shield and a flag held aloft in the other, and clad, like St. Ursus, in complete armour, and Bishop Lambert, in rich ecclesiastical dress, and holding the crozier, as St. Nicholas does in the Solothurn picture. The similarity between the two designs is particularly close in the position and movement of the arms and hands of the Infant Christ. The woodcut, which is signed “H. H.” on the edge of the step on the left, and dated 1519, is richly and grandly designed, the figures of the two saints having been conceived with great nobility, and it is possible that Holbein was so satisfied with its composition that he made use of it two years later when Gerster came to him for an altar-piece.[249]