Out of such unpromising materials has the painter made a picture that would challenge attention among any. If we knew nothing as to the identity of this woman, sitting oblivious of the children at her knee, wrapped in her own dark thoughts, we should certainly want to know something of her story and of the story of the little fellow whose eyes are breathlessly intent upon some purer, sweeter vision. There is at Cologne, in a private collection, a deeply interesting duplicate of this work; also on paper afterwards mounted on wood, but not cut out. Unfortunately this latter has suffered such irremediable injuries that it is quite impossible now to pronounce upon its claim to be either the earlier example or a replica; but good judges have believed it to be by Holbein. Its chief interest, however, from a biographical point of view, may be said to lie in the sixteenth-century writing pasted on at the top. Literally translated, this runs-- "Love towards God consists in Charity. Who hath this love can feel no hate."[5] It is difficult to see on what grounds Woltmann, who was inclined to accept the picture as genuine, should hold the inscription to have been added by someone desirous of increasing the value of the work by representing it to be an allegorical picture of Charity. There was never a time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value as the portraits. And surely the second line is utterly inconsistent with the theory. Original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a plea which Holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a bitterness his own errors could not have tended to cure. When the Basel painting was cut out to be mounted, the last numeral was lost; so that it now stands dated 152-. But all the other facts put it beyond question that the picture could not have been done before 1529. The baby of 1522 was now the boy of seven, and his successor would seem to have been born during the first months of its father's visit to England, and to be now some eighteen months old. It may be as well to say here, once for all, as much as need be said of Holbein's family. As already stated, his wife survived him by six years, dying at Basel in 1549. By her first marriage she had one son, Franz Schmidt--who seems to have been a worthy and successful man of trade. She was the mother of four children by her marriage with Holbein;--Philip, born 1522; Katharina, 1527; Jacob, about 1530; and Kuenegoldt, about 1532.