One or two original studies remain, which were evidently made as designs for exterior wall-paintings of which all record has been lost. There is a slight but masterly washed pen drawing in the Amerbach Collection (Pl. 40 (1)),[268] representing the upper part of a house in which the irregularly-placed windows have been adapted with the greatest skill to suit the purposes of the elaborate scheme of Italian architecture, one part of which is made to recede by a series of flat columns with ornamented capitals seen in sharp perspective, while the other half appears to project, and shows the seated figure of an Emperor, possibly Charlemagne, between two windows, to which Holbein has given rounded arches with a medallion between them containing an antique head. Dr. Ganz is, no doubt, right in his suggestion that this drawing is a study for a scheme of decoration for the façade of the family house of the Amerbachs in the Rheingasse, in Little Basel, and that the figure of the enthroned Emperor is a pictorial representation of the name—“zum Kaiserstuhl”—by which the house was known. Probably Holbein received a commission for its decoration in 1519, at the time he was painting Bonifacius Amerbach’s portrait.[269] In the same collection there is a design for a framework to surround an ordinary square-headed window, either for internal or external wall-painting,[270] over which he has thrown an ornamented arch filled in with scalloping, and crowned with a brazier from which flames are blowing. It is supported by pillars of elaborate and fantastic design, broken up into various bands of rich ornament, among them ox skulls with small hanging garlands. At the base, on each side, is a nude figure of a woman with a basket of fire on her head. The window, only one half of which is shown, is supported below with corbels, the central one with a grotesque head with an iron ring suspended from its mouth. A third sketch, for the ground floor of the Hertenstein house, has been already described.[271] VOL. I., PLATE 40. [Illustration: 1. STUDY FOR A PAINTED HOUSE FRONT WITH THE FIGURE OF A SEATED EMPEROR BASEL GALLERY ] [Illustration: 2. THE AMBASSADORS OF THE SAMNITES BEFORE CURIUS DENTATUS 1521-22 Fragment of the wall-painting formerly in the Basel Town Hall BASEL GALLERY ] [Sidenote: LEGEND OF THE INN “ZUR BLUME”]