Regarded as illustrations to the books of the Old Testament, these woodcuts are in all ways admirable. Holbein has brought to their making less of that imaginative power and biting humour which characterise the marvellous little pictures of the great Dance. He has concentrated his skill rather upon the faithful and accurate telling of these sacred stories as they are given in the text itself, and he does this with a perfect understanding of their strong dramatic power and their equally strong human interest. They are historical rather than spiritual in their conception, filled with the actual spirit of the narrative itself, to the exclusion of all else. He is revealed in them as a teller of stories of the first rank, with the power of seizing the most dramatic moment of each incident he depicts with unfailing instinct, and then representing it with a few unerring strokes of his pencil clearly and simply, with no over-elaboration of needless detail or overcrowding of characters. All that is absolutely necessary he gives, and no more; but within these narrow limits, a space only of a few square inches, he produced a series of designs admirable in composition, dignified and noble in conception, and yet free and dramatic in action.[488] It is impossible within the limits of this book to attempt even a short description of these illustrations. Among the finest are Abraham sacrificing Isaac (No. 5), Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh (No. 9) (Pl. 69 (1)), Moses and the Burning Bush (No. 11), the Brazen Serpent (No. 25), the Submission of the Midianites (No. 26), Ruth and Boaz (No. 32) (Pl. 69 (2)), Hannah and Elkanah (No. 33), the Death of Jeroboam’s Son (No. 45), Elisha and the Children (No. 47), David before the Ark (No. 53), Solomon blessing the Faithful (No. 55), the Blinding of Tobit (No. 61), Job (No. 62), Esther and Ahasuerus (No. 65), Judith with the Head of Holofernes (No. 67) (Pl. 69 (3)), Daniel in the Lion’s Den (No. 84), Amos (No. 87) (Pl. 69 (4)), and Jonah under the Walls of Nineveh (No. 88). Considerable charm is added to a number of them by the beauty of the landscape or architectural background, put in with a few simple but masterly lines, as in the Burning Bush (No. 11), in which Moses kneels to unfasten his shoes, his sheep grazing round him; in Moses receiving the Commandments (No. 21) (Pl. 70 (1)), with the people at work in the vineyards, and in the distance a harvest waggon passing along a road towards a village on the plain; and in the walled city of Jerusalem with the Temple rising in its midst, in the Return from the Captivity (No. 58) (Pl. 70 (2)). Many others could be cited, as well as subjects containing dramatic battle scenes, recalling the masterly study of a fight of landsknechte in the Basel Gallery which has been described on a previous page.[489] This is particularly the case in the cut showing the Defeat of Sennacherib’s Army (No. 57). Other animated battle