The original study for the Louvre portrait, in the Basel Gallery (No. 319),[395] is painted in oil on paper, afterwards fastened down on panel. With the exception of a plain background, and some slight differences in the costume, it agrees in all points with the more elaborately finished picture. Erasmus is using a book bound in red as a writing-desk, which rests upon a second volume. The tablecloth is green. His upper lip shows several days’ growth of iron-grey hair. Although not so fine in execution, it is nevertheless a remarkable and lifelike study. The present plain green background, however, is not original. It had at one time a patterned tapestry hanging behind the figure, as can be seen in the woodcut taken from it by Rudolf Manuel in the Latin edition of Sebastian Münster’s _Cosmography_, published in 1550, which has an inscription beneath it referring to the portrait in terms of high praise, and stating that Holbein painted it from life.[396] It is described in the Amerbach inventory as “Ein Erasmus mit olfärb vf papir in eim ghüs H. Holbeins arbeit,” and it appears to have belonged to Bonifacius almost from the day it was painted. All evidence points to this oil-study being the third portrait mentioned by Erasmus in his letter to Pirkheimer of the 3rd June, 1524, which was taken by the painter into France. Bonifacius Amerbach was absent in that country, studying law at Avignon under Alciat, and afterwards at the University of Montpellier, for two years, from May 1522 to May 1524.[397] In his absence Erasmus sent him his own portrait as a present, and by the hands of the artist who painted it. If the date of the letter to Pirkheimer is correct, Holbein must have paid his visit to the South of France in the early spring of 1524. The letter to Pirkheimer, written in the beginning of June, states that the pictures had been sent to England and France “recently,” but, according to Woltmann, Amerbach was back again in Basel in May, before the date of the letter, so that the sequence of events becomes a little confused. It is, of course, possible that Amerbach received the portrait on the eve of his departure from Montpellier, and that he may even have made the journey home in Holbein’s company; while Erasmus may not have troubled himself to inform his correspondent that the portrait sent into France was already back again in Basel. [Sidenote: VISIT TO THE SOUTH OF FRANCE]