THE year 1526 was by no means a favourable one for the members of the Basel guild of painters, although, in all probability, it was in this very year that Holbein received one of his most important commissions, the famous altar-piece known as the “Meyer Madonna,” now in the Grand-ducal palace of Darmstadt, in the possession of the Grand Duke of Hesse. At this period ecclesiastical dissension had reached its acutest pitch, and party feeling ran so high that there was little time or inclination among the leading citizens for the patronage or even the consideration of the fine arts. The Reformers, then in the ascendant in the control of public affairs, were strongly opposed to all forms of pictorial or decorative art for church use, and it was this side of the painter’s craft which, until then, had been the most lucrative. Times, indeed, were so bad for them that in January of this year the Painters’ Guild had been forced to petition the Council for permission to remain in Basel in the pursuit of their art in order that they might obtain means for the support of their families. Holbein, in spite of his outstanding merits and the high reputation he had made for himself in his adopted city, felt the pinch of adverse circumstances almost as severely as his brother painters. The authorities, unwilling, apparently, to complete the decorations of the Town Hall, had no remunerative work to give him. From November 1523, when he received the last instalment of his money for his wall-paintings in that building, down to the beginning of 1526 there is no record of any civic payment made to him. On the 3rd of March, however, in the latter year, he received the meagre sum of two Basel pounds ten shillings, about equal to two gulden, for the painting of some shields or coats of arms for the borough of Waldenburg, a township on the slopes of the Jura within the jurisdiction of Basel, no doubt for the decoration of the court of justice or public hall of that place. The entry runs as follows: “Sampstag nach Reminiscere, 1526: Item ij ll. x sh. geben Holbein dem moler, für etliche schilt am stettlin Waldenburg vergangener Iaren zemolen.”[491] Unimportant commissions of this nature cannot have been of much help in keeping the wolf from the door, and that he was willing to undertake such mere journeyman’s work, in which his splendid talents could have little opportunity for their full display, affords proof that for the time being an artist’s life in Switzerland was a very precarious one. [Sidenote: MEYER’S COMMISSION FOR A PICTURE]