waitress, or hostess, with a tall cylindrical beer-glass supported on her right hand, while with the other she holds up her finely-pleated apron.[353] She wears a large flat hat of unusual shape on the side of her head, trimmed all round with bunches of feathers, and round her neck is a gold collar of openwork with the initials “M.O.” repeated several times. The “Amor” of the first-named collar or neckband was the invention, in all probability, of the artist himself, by adding an A and an R to the initials, M.O., of the lady’s name. These initials indicate that Holbein’s sitter was Magdalena Offenburg, and the likeness between these studies and the “Laïs” and “Venus” pictures is striking.[354] This notorious personage, by birth a Tschekkenbürlin, and the mother of Dorothea Offenburg, who at one time was regarded as the model of the “Laïs,” married, on the death of Hans Offenburg in 1514, Christof Truchsess von Wolhusen. She appears to have served as a model and to have had relationships of a doubtful character with more than one painter of Basel. There is a drawing of her by Urs Graf, dated 1516, to which he has added an indecorous marginal note reflecting upon her course of life.[355] VOL. I., PLATE 51. [Illustration: COSTUME STUDY Two drawings from a set of designs of Ladies’ Costumes BASEL GALLERY ] [Illustration: COSTUME STUDY Two drawings from a set of designs of Ladies’ Costumes BASEL GALLERY ] VOL. I., PLATE 52. [Illustration: “THE EDELDAME” One of a set of designs of Ladies’ Costumes BASEL GALLERY ] [Sidenote: COSTUMES WORN BY BASEL LADIES] One use to which Holbein put such drawings as these is to be seen in the “Dance of Death” woodcuts. In several of them in which women are introduced, these costume studies are closely followed; for instance, in the little picture of the newly-married couple, the wife’s dress is almost identical with that in the first drawing of the “Baseler Frauentrachten” series; and other dresses of the set are closely copied in such cuts as “The Countess” and the “Arms of Death.” These drawings, as already noted, show very plainly the peculiar carriage of the body in walking which the ladies of Basel adopted in Holbein’s day, with the back hollowed so that the lower part of the figure was thrust forward, in a very ugly fashion to modern eyes, but no doubt necessary to some extent owing to the length of the dress in front, which had always to be held up by one hand.