At all events his sons did leave Augsburg about 1514; or, at any rate, Hans did, since there is a naive little Virgin and Child in the Basel Museum, dated 1514, which must have been painted in the neighbourhood of Constance in this year,--probably for the village church where it was discovered. As everything points to the conclusion that Holbein was born in 1497, he would have been some seventeen years old at this time, and "Prosy" eighteen or nineteen. Substantially, therefore, they must have looked pretty much as in the drawing which their father had made of them three years before; that precious drawing in silver-point which is now in the Berlin Collection (Plate 2). Over the elder, still with the curly locks of the group in the "St. Paul Basilica," is written _Prosy_; over the younger, _Hanns_. The age of the latter, fourteen, may still be deciphered above his portrait, but that of Ambrose has quite vanished. Between the two is the family name, written in Augsburg fashion, Holbain. At the top of the sheet stands the year of the drawing, almost illegible, but believed to be 1511. Illustration: PLATE 2 "PROSY" AND "HANNS" _HOLBAIN_ [_Drawn by their father, Hans Holbein the elder_] _Silver-point. Berlin Cabinet_ Of the elder brother all that is certainly known may be said here once for all. In 1517 he entered the Painters' Guild at Basel, where he is called "Ambrosius Holbein, citizen of Augsburg." He made a number of designs for wood-engraving, title-pages, and ornaments, for the printers of Basel--all of fair merit. He may also have worked in the studio of Hans Herbster, a Basel painter of considerable note. Herbster's portrait in oils, long held to be a fine work of the younger brother,--now that it has passed from the Earl of Northbrook's collection to that of the Basel Museum, is attributed to Ambrose Holbein. But little else is known of him; and after 1519, as has been said, the absence of any record of him among the living suggests that he died in that year. In the late summer of 1515 came that momentous trifle which has for ever linked the name of young Hans Holbein with that of Erasmus. Whether, as some say, the scholar gave him the order, or, as seems more likely, some friend of both had the copy, now in the Basel Museum, on the margins of which the lad drew his spirited pen-and-ink sketches,--it is on record that they were made before the end of December, and that Erasmus himself was delighted with their wit and vigour. And, in truth, they are exceedingly clever, both in the art with which a few strokes suggest a picture, and in that by which the picture emphasises every telling point in the satire. But a great deal too much has been built upon both the satire and the sketches; a great deal, also, falsely built upon them.