On July 12, 1521, Dürer reached home again. His mind was now filled with schemes for religious pictures; but he produced comparatively little. One reason for this was the bad state of his health. Another was that he gave more and more of his time to mathematical study, which he considered important. His most famous picture of this time is the portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher at Berlin. At Nuremberg, in 1525, was published his book on geometry, and in 1527 appeared a work on fortification. But his health was failing. He had caught a fever in the Low Countries, from which he never fully recovered. On the night of April 6, 1528, he died, so suddenly that there was not even time to call his dearest friends to his side. He was buried in a vault belonging to his wife’s family, in the cemetery of Saint John, at Nuremberg. Luther, the great reformer, said of the famous artist in a letter, “As for Dürer, assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men; yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of trouble, and from greater troubles in store, lest he, that deserved nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers. Amen!” PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 48, SERIAL No. 48 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. [Illustration: ERASMUS--HOLBEIN] _DÜRER AND HOLBEIN_ _The Young Artist_ FOUR Hans Holbein came of an artistic family. Indeed, he is usually known as Holbein the Younger; for his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, was a painter of great ability himself. His uncle also, his mother’s father, and most of his family were painters and decorators in the city of Augsburg, Germany, where Holbein the Younger was born sometime toward the end of the fifteenth century. No one knows exactly the year in which Holbein first opened his eyes. In those times they did not keep such an accurate record of births and deaths as they do nowadays. So, unless a man was the son of a king or some other important person, it did not matter much when he was born. Still, we are probably right when we say that Hans Holbein was born in 1497. Those were the days of Augsburg’s prosperity. All its magnificence is gone now; but then it boasted of many merchant princes, men of distinction, and patrons of the fine arts. It was a favorite city of Emperor Maximilian himself. There was less travel at that time than now, and consequently the citizens of each town were much more closely bound together. Civic pride ran high. It was the period of the Renaissance, that great period of awakening to the appreciation of fine things in art and literature. So of course Augsburg had its Guild of Painters, and Holbein the Elder was a member of it.