The face is a refined one, with a high forehead, long nose, finely cut lips, and fair complexion, and in the “Laïs” in particular, does not suggest the supposed character of the sitter as tradition has handed it down. It is possible that the painter to some extent idealised her features. The “Venus” is less tender and attractive in expression; so much so, indeed, that Woltmann[516] suggests that it was painted at an earlier date, and that the “Laïs” was a renewed and more successful attempt to represent the same idea. What that idea may have been has given rise to considerable speculation. Wornum[517] quotes an old legend to the effect that the artist could not obtain payment for the “Venus” picture, and so, in revenge, he painted her as the famous courtesan, Laïs of Corinth, the mistress of the great painter Apelles; but this explanation is an absurd one. Woltmann’s suggestion is that both pictures were painted for some lover of the lady, who wished, in the first instance, to express his love, and then, later on, his contempt. It is more probable that the pictures were the result of relationships between the painter himself and Magdalena, though beyond the fact that she served him more than once as a model, there is no proof of this. This supposed connection between Holbein and the lady has given rise to much imaginative writing in recent monographs. In one of them we are told that “when Holbein inscribed his second portrait of Dorothea with the words Laïs Corinthiaca, the midsummer madness must have been already a matter of scorn and wonder to himself. His whole life and the works of his life are the negation of the groves of Corinth. The paint was not long dry on the Goddess of Love—at any rate, her dress was not worn out—before he had seen her in her true colours: the daughter of the horseleech, crying ‘Give, give.’ And so he painted her in 1526; to scourge himself, surely, since she was too notoriously infamous to be affected by it. As if in stern scorn of every beauty, every allure, he set himself to record them in detail.... Laïs is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than Venus. No emotion has hurried the painter’s hand or confused his eye this time. In vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. He knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker’s coast. No faltering; no turning back. He can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. He is a painter now; not a lover.... The plague was raging in Basel all through that spring and summer, but I doubt if Holbein shuddered at its contact as at the loveliness he painted,”[518] and so on. This is all very pretty, but the imagination of the writer has run away with her. What suggestion could be more fantastic than that in painting the Venus, Holbein’s love for the lady was so great that both hand and eye faltered