Although Erasmus paid his first visit to Basel in 1513 for the purpose of making the acquaintance of Froben, who was about to publish several of his works, including his edition of the New Testament, and renewed this visit on several occasions, sometimes remaining there for months at a time, he did not make the city his permanent home until 1521. Both during these earlier visits and after he had settled in Basel, he made Froben’s home his own. This house, “zum Sessel,” was in the Fischmarkt, but after Froben’s death in 1526, Erasmus moved to the house of Froben’s son, “zum Luft,” now No. 18 in the Bäumleingasse, and it was in this latter house that he died in 1536. He was attracted by the freedom and independence of the life within the city, and the opportunities it afforded both for quiet study and daily intercourse with many learned men, and also by the number and fame of its printers and their presses. [Sidenote: PORTRAITS OF ERASMUS AND ÆGIDIUS] The earliest portrait of Erasmus of which we have a record is the one painted by Quentin Metsys in Antwerp in 1517, which formed the left-hand side of a double portrait or diptych, of which the other half contained the portrait of Peter Ægidius, the learned traveller, and town-clerk of Antwerp,[364] to whom the _Utopia_ was dedicated, and whose garden was selected by More as the scene in which Raphael Hythlodæus told the imaginary story of that island city. It was painted as a joint-gift from Erasmus and Ægidius to Sir Thomas, and the two portraits were hinged together, and sent over to England. Several letters in the correspondence of More and Erasmus have reference to this present. The painting was delayed in the first place by the serious illness of Peter, and then by indisposition on the part of Erasmus. “I was well enough,” Erasmus tells More, “but some fool of a doctor prescribed for me a couple of pills for purging my bile, and I, still more foolishly, followed his advice; my picture had been previously begun, but, from the physic I took, when I came back to the painter, he declared that my features were not the same, so that his work is delayed for a few days until I become more alive.” The portraits were finished by the 16th of September 1517, and sent to More, who was then at Calais, in charge of Erasmus’ “famulus,” Peter Cocles. More’s letter of thanks, dated October 6th, expressed the greatest delight with the gift, and contained a Latin poem in honour of the portraits, in which they were both minutely described. In a postscript he spoke in admiration of the way in which Quentin had imitated his (More’s) handwriting on the letter which Peter holds in his hand.