authentic records of the amounts received by Holbein for his work. [Sidenote: WALL-PAINTINGS IN BASEL TOWN HALL] The Town Hall, which stood in the market-place, with the house of Jakob Meyer, “zum Hasen,” adjoining it on the south, has undergone considerable changes since its building, so that to-day both the exterior and interior are by no means in the same condition as when Holbein was working there. In those days the Council Chamber was an irregular quadrangle, about 34 feet by 65 feet, and only 12½ feet high, and the ceiling was supported by three columns down the centre of the room. The wall fronting the market-place was entirely filled with large windows and the doors leading to the chief staircase, and provided no space for decorative treatment, so that Holbein’s work was confined to the three remaining walls, the long one opposite, which was also broken up by two windows and two doors, and the two narrower ones at either end, which were not parallel. Of these latter, the one on the north had a heating chamber and a large stove at one end of it, and was separated from the rest of the hall by a balustrade. The only unbroken wall was at the southern end, next Meyer’s house. It was called in the accounts the “back wall,” because the visitor turned his back on it on entering the room, and this wall was not decorated by Holbein until after his return from his first visit to England. Taking it altogether, the room was so low and so irregular in its arrangement that it was by no means well suited for carrying out a scheme of mural decoration on a monumental scale; but Holbein triumphed over all difficulties, and produced magnificent results, so far as can be judged from the few studies, tracings, and copies which remain. The subjects selected for representation were divided from one another by richly-ornamented Renaissance columns, so that the room, when finished, appeared to be open on all sides, here looking out upon some landscape, and there into some great hall or palace made to appear vast by the clever use of perspective. Between the principal pictures were placed smaller, single-figure subjects, standing in niches on a somewhat higher level, and forming part of the architectural framework. The subjects of the larger paintings were of the kind then popular north of the Rhine, and were intended, by means of celebrated examples taken from ancient history, to bring home to those who used the room, the absolute necessity of impartial justice in the administration of the affairs of a state or community, and at the same time to indicate the punishment which in most cases is bound to follow the breaking of the law, and to extol the virtues of simplicity and a love of country free from all self-seeking. These subjects, and the Latin inscriptions which accompanied them, were not Holbein’s own invention, but were, in all probability, selected for him by such learned friends as Myconius and Beatus Rhenanus.[275]