RECENT exhibitions of the portrait drawings and paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger have aroused interest once more in his working methods and the precise function the drawings served in relation to the painted portraits. The survival of a large number of Holbein's portrait drawings, apparently assembled after his death in 1543 and known as the 'Great Booke', provides a body of material for study which has fortunately remained intact. If these indeed are the drawings mentioned in the 1547 inventory of Edward VI as 'Itm A booke of paternes for phiosioneamyes', the description is apt. This article will seek to show that the drawings did not simply serve to record likenesses, but were used quite literally as 'paternes' or cartoons for painted portraits. Direct comparison of the drawings, the under- drawings revealed by infra-red reflectography and the painted portraits themselves, helps to clarify the significance of each of these working stages individually as well as their joint contribution to the final result.

WHEN Erasmus of Rotterdam returned in May 1535 from Freiburg im Breisgau to Basel, the town he had left in 1529 at the outbreak of the Reformation, he could rely on friends to look after him. Bonifacius Amerbach (1495- 1562), the lawyer and new Rector of Basel University, and the printer Hieronymus Froben (1501-63) had made the preparations for his move, and were also taking care of the dissolution of his household in Freiburg.* Weakened as he was by a long-standing kidney complaint together with gout, Erasmus was scarcely in a fit state to undertake further long journeys. The thought of having at his dis- posal in Basel living and working quarters in the house of Hieronymus Froben in the Baiumleingasse banished any possible confessional doubts. It seems that he hardly ever left Froben's house. A further attack of dysentery lasting twenty days finally led to his death during the night of 11th July 1536. He was almost sixty seven. The next day Erasmus was buried in Basel Cathedral, amid great mourning.

THE DRAWING to which this article is devoted (Figs.40 and 45) is in the collection made by the architect and collector Mikael Gustav Anckarsvard now in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.' The sheet measures 21.5 by 31 cm. On the recto is a compositional study in pen and ink over traces of black chalk. The subject is Noah's thanksgiving after the Flood, represented as Raphael painted it on the ceiling of the Stanza di Eliodoro (Fig.41). On the verso, also in pen and ink over traces of stylus, there are two kneeling putti reading from a scroll, not obviously connected with any known work by Raphael. The paper is covered with brown spots, which are probably the result of glue used to lay down the drawing. The pen and ink inscriptions on both sides of the sheet recording Raphael's name date from different periods, most probably the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The drawing was grouped together with a number of mediocre copies after paintings by Raphael dating from later centuries, and it was described as a copy after Raphael on the old passepartout.

passepartout.