When Holbein came back to London to find Warham and Colet dead, and Sir Thomas More, with but a little space of life left, retiring from the high office of Chancellor, he seems to have found new friends in the Steelyard; and perhaps because he was anxious to establish a position among the members of the richest trading guild of his time, he seems to have devoted a great deal of care and time to his world-famous portrait of George Gisze, one of the merchants of the Steelyard. The picture, in an admirable condition of preservation, is to be seen in the Berlin Gallery, and is one of the richest, most decorative portraits ever painted by the artist. It will be found reproduced in these pages, and perhaps there will be some who will wonder whether the artist did not work deliberately to interest and astonish his new clients, and whether, for that purpose, he did not depart from his usual reticence and good taste. The portrait of Gisze himself, a handsome man, wearing a bright scarlet doublet under a black cloak, is admirable, it arrests and holds the attention. But the heterogeneous mass of accessories startles and tires the spectator. Vase and flowers, scissors, book, scales, letters, golden balls, inscription, keys, watches, seals--there seems to be no limit to the material with which Holbein has loaded his canvas, and the accessories are all so well painted that they seem to be wasted. There is no reason to doubt that Holbein was deliberately painting a picture for purpose of advertisement, and that he intended to make his appeal to a class that, for all its business acumen and commercial intelligence, was not on the same intellectual plane as the men of Sir Thomas More's world. PLATE VIII.--SIR HENRY WYATT (In the Louvre) This portrait of Sir Henry Wyatt, a bust on panel with green background, was long thought to stand for the painter's friend and patron Sir Thomas More, and it has been left for modern research to discover the mistake. Holbein painted this portrait twice. There is a replica in the National Gallery of Ireland. [Illustration] If this was his intention, he can at least plead that it was entirely successful. Not only did it delight the magnates of the Steelyard, who showered commissions upon him as long as he could execute them, it carried the story of his fame to the last corner of the earth where the story of a man's achievement can obtain a generous hearing, that is to his own city. Burgomaster Meier zum Hirten, not to be confused with that other Meier who married Dorothea Kannegiesser and looks at us to-day from the walls of the Basle Museum, wrote to Holbein in London inviting him to return, with the promise of a retainer of thirty gulden annually. But the painter had learned that the tender mercies of the inartistic are cruel, and he was now beyond the need for any of the service that Basle could offer.