The only records which remain of this great work, all of which are in the Basel Gallery, consist of a few fragments taken from the walls before the last traces of the paintings had finally faded away; original studies for three of the chief subjects from Holbein’s own hand; a few contemporary copies of his designs; and others taken from those parts of the design which could still be discerned at the time when the actual fragments of Holbein’s handiwork were cut away from the walls. Unfortunately the paintings themselves had but a short life. Less than fifty years after the last one was completed they were already in a deplorable condition, largely through damp. Probably the three months’ interval which elapsed between the completion of the building and the beginning of its decoration was due to the desire to allow the walls to become thoroughly dry; but even this precaution was not sufficient to save Holbein’s handiwork from gradual destruction. The walls, possibly from faulty construction, appear never to have become entirely free from moisture, while the paintings were also allowed to suffer from general neglect. Wurstisen in his _Epitome Historiæ Basiliensis_, published in 1577,[276] speaks of them as “delineations of the choicest things by the hand of the German Apelles,” but two years later the largest of them was reported to be so terribly injured by the weather that it was in danger of complete destruction. The Council, therefore, commissioned the painter Hans Bock to make a copy of it in oils on canvas, which, when completed, was hung on the wall in front of the original painting. This “large piece,” which Bock copied in 1579, was probably the whole of the back wall, containing the “Rehoboam” and the “Samuel and Saul.” This work occupied his whole time for twenty-six weeks, and his application for payment for this half-year’s work, dated the 23rd November 1579, to be found among the Basel archives. In it he demands one hundred florins, a sum which the Council evidently considered too great, although it works out at little more than a shilling a day in modern money, a moderate but not a contemptible wage as rates of payment went in those days. Among the reasons Bock gives for asking so much is that far more is really due to a copyist, who has to imitate laboriously the work of another, than to one who paints merely from his own fancy; and he goes on to say that, “among all the Holbein pieces in the painted hall, this is not only the greatest in length, but also contains the most difficult and laborious work, as, besides landscape, there are one hundred faces drawn perfectly or partially, so that I must copy them all piece by piece, besides many horses, weapons, and other things.”[277] The details he mentions were only to be found in one of the paintings, that of “Samuel and Saul,” though it did not contain nearly one hundred heads, but with the adjoining picture of “Rehoboam,” which Bock probably