sweet, dated 1543.”[87] The various miniatures of the painter, the greater number of which are merely good and almost contemporary copies, described in a later chapter,[88] have all, with one possible exception, the same date, 1543, upon them, and, like the engravings, represent the artist with a beard, wearing a black skull-cap, and, in those which show the hands, in the act of painting. The exception is the fine miniature in the Salting Collection, which is inscribed “ETATIS SVÆ 35,” but is without date. It is almost certain, however, that this miniature does not represent the painter.[89] [Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S BIRTHPLACE] The fact that the inscriptions on these various engravings and miniatures agree as to the date and the age of the painter does not necessarily prove that such date and age were placed by the artist himself upon the original painting on which most of them are based; but the probability is that such was the case, and that Holbein, therefore, was forty-five years old in 1543. Unless, however, more definite evidence is forthcoming in the future, the question must remain undecided, though it is practically certain that his birth took place either in 1497 or 1498. Nothing is known of Holbein’s early life in Augsburg, where he spent the greater part of his first seventeen years. It is not very likely that his father took his family with him upon his painting expeditions to Ulm, Frankfurt, and elsewhere, although he became a burgher of the first-named place for a time. It was the custom at that period for a painter to leave wife and children at home while he visited other centres in search of work or to carry out commissions. The house in which the young Hans is supposed to have been born is still standing in Augsburg, and bears a recording tablet on its front. It is in the Vorderer Lech, No. 496A, one of the quieter streets of the city to-day. It is thus described by Mr. Davies: “The Vorderer Lech obtains its name from the fact that a narrow channel of the Lech runs clear and green down one side of the street, separating the roadway from the houses on the north side. Access is gained to these houses in most instances by a wooden bridge or gangway which leads the visitor under an archway in the house itself. The house of the Holbeins, one of those little whitewashed buildings with the comfortable red-tiled roofs which are so plentiful in the city, has nothing to distinguish it beyond the tablet aforesaid. You pass under the arch, and find on either side the doors (still retaining their ancient hinges) and the open staircase which leads to the separate tenements into which the house is now divided. Ascending the staircase to the right, one finds the little room wherein tradition has it that our Hans Holbein was born, the little kitchen over which his mother presided, and the room which is traditionally regarded as the painting room of Hans Holbein the elder. It looks pleasantly out over enclosed