NO absolutely conclusive proof has yet been discovered of the exact date of the birth of Hans Holbein the Younger. For years the question was complicated by more than one forgery of dates and signatures on certain pictures in Augsburg, and by spurious amplifications made in the modern copies taken from certain entries in the annals of the convent of St. Catherine. Owing to these forgeries, Dr. Woltmann, in the first edition of his book,[66] advanced the opinion that Holbein was born in 1495; but before the publication of the first volume of the second edition of his work, in 1874, these inscriptions and entries had been proved to be falsifications, and he then altered the date to 1497,[67] and this is now generally accepted as correct. Equal doubt existed at one time as to the place of his birth. Among earlier writers, Carel van Mander (1604) and Patin (1676) stated that he was born in Basel, while Matthis Quad gave his birthplace as Grünstadt in the Palatinate. Sandrart (1675) was the first biographer to name Augsburg, which modern research has shown to be correct. The forgeries, no doubt, were the result of the discovery that Holbein was not a Swiss, as had been usually supposed, and were intended to supply convincing evidence that he was of German origin, and a citizen of Augsburg, and also to furnish proof of the precocity of his youthful genius. [Sidenote: THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH] The chief forgery was an inscription on a picture in the Augsburg Gallery (Nos. 74-77), dated 1512, which until 1845 had always been rightly regarded as the work of the elder Holbein. This picture is one of the four panels which originally formed the inner and outer sides of the two shutters of an altar-piece or shrine painted for the convent of St. Catherine.[68] The two inner panels represent the Martyrdom of St. Catherine[69] and the Legend of St. Ulrich, the patron saint of Augsburg; the outer ones the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and the Virgin and St. Anne teaching the Infant Christ to walk. On the panel representing St. Catherine the date 1512 occurs on a votive tablet containing a Latin prayer to the saint, while on the old original frame the name of the painter, “Hans Holbain,” the two last letters of the surname now defaced, stands in gold letters.[70] It was upon the panel representing the Virgin and St. Anne with the Infant Christ[71] that the false inscription was placed. In this picture Mary and her Mother are seated, each holding a hand of the youthful Saviour, who stands between them on the bench making his first attempts to walk. Three small angels hold up a curtain behind them, and at the top of the panel is a band of rich Renaissance ornamentation, with two cupids blowing horns.[72] St. Anne holds an open book on her lap with her left hand; and when, in 1854, the panel was separated from its obverse side and cleaned and restored, a Latin inscription upon this book came to light, parts of which were hidden by the hand of the saint.