And now it is 1519, and with it the true Hour of Holbein's destiny is striking. Take away the coming seven years and you will still have what Holbein is too often thought to be only--a great portrait-painter. No greater ever etched the soul of a man on his mask. His previous and his after achievements would still amply justify the honour of centuries. But add these seven years, from 1519 to 1526, and dull indeed must be the intelligence that cannot recognise the great Master, without qualification and in the light of any thoughtful comparison with the very greatest. His Basel career may be said to begin here; his earlier work furnishing the Prologue. On the 25th September, 1519, when he was about two-and-twenty, he joined the Basel Guild of Painters; that same "Guild of Heaven" (_Zunft zum Himmel_) which his brother Ambrose had joined two years earlier and from which he seems to have passed to the veritable guild of Heaven at about this latter date. And hardly is the ink dry upon the record of his membership than Holbein painted one of the most beautiful of his portraits--that of Bonifacius Amerbach (Plate 6). He stands beside a tree on which is hung an inscription. Behind him is Holbein's favourite early background,--the blue of the sky, here broken by the warm brown and green of the branch, and the faint glimpse of far-away mountains. Under his soft cap, with a cross for badge, his intensely gleaming blue eyes look out beneath grave brows. The lips are softly yet firmly set; the mouth framed by the sunny beard which repeats the red-brown of his hair. The black scholar's gown, with its trimming of black fur, discloses his rich damask doublet and white collar. Illustration: PLATE 6 BONIFACIUS AMERBACH _Oils. Basel Museum_ Well may the inscription assert--above the signature, the name of the sitter and the date 14th October, 1519-- _"Though but a painted face I am not far removed from Life; but rather, By truthful lines, the noble image of my Possessor. As he accomplishes eight times three years, so faithfully in me also Is Nature's work proclaimed by the work of Art."_ For here in truth is a work of Nature which is no less a work of Art. This is the Amerbach who began and inspired his son Basilius (so named after Bonifacius's brother) to complete the Holbein Collection, which the Basel Museum bought long afterwards. And such was the love of both that they included, perhaps deliberately, much that has small probability of claim to be Holbein's work. They would reject nothing attributed to him; thinking a bushel of chaff well worth housing if it might yield one genuine grain. And in view of these expressive facts, it is hardly necessary to argue in behalf of the tradition that more than a conventional friendship bound the two young men together,--printer's son and painter's son, musician-scholar and scholar-painter, Churchman and Churchman; the one twenty-four, the other twenty-two.