was represented sitting at a desk, with an open book before him, ready to write. When the paint was fresh it was possible to see that the book was the Paraphrase to the Epistle to the Romans, but the letters are no longer visible. On the forefinger of the delicately veined right hand a seal ring is conspicuous. The finely chiseled features wear a pensive expression, not at all like the satirical cast of countenance seen in Holbein's later portraits. There were two natures in the same man; one the scholar and theologian, represented by the Enchiridion and the edition of the Greek Testament, the other the sportive mocker, emerging in the Moria. Matsys, the painter of serious, religious pictures, saw the one side of the man; Holbein, the merry portraitpainter and caricaturist, the other. The boyish face of Gilles, in the diptych, makes a good contrast to its pendant. He is holding a letter of More in his hand,1 and has before him a copy of the Antibarbari by Erasmus-fit symbols of his fame depending mostly on his friends.

Both pictures were sent to More in September. His letters of acknowledgment to Erasmus and Gilles show how immensely pleased he was. To the former he wrote:

You can more easily imagine than I can tell how delighted I am. For as the likenesses of such men done even in chalk or charcoal would captivate all who were not dead to admiration of learning and virtue, how can anyone express in words or fail to conceive how much I am ravished when the features of such friends are recalled to my memory, by pictures drawn with such art that they may challenge comparison with the works of any ancient painter? Whoever sees them would think them molded or sculptured rather than painted, so exactly do they seem to stand out in the exact proportions of the human figure. You cannot believe, dearest Erasmus, how much your care to please me has added to my love

The writing is not legible, but More speaks of it. Allen, ep. 683.

'As the first known edition of this book was printed at Cologne in 1518, the title must have been added later, or this picture represents a manuscript, or previous edition, not now extant.

Allen, ep. 654

• Allen, epp. 683, 684.

for you, though I was sure before that nothing could add to it, nor how I glory in your esteem and in this token by which you declare that you prefer my love to that of anyone.

Having painted the portrait, Matsys proceeded to found some bronze medallions with a head of Erasmus, newly drawn and quite different from the first work. He did this in 1519, if we may assume that they are the same as the medallions bearing that date now extant in the museum at Basle and at the Luther-house in Wittenberg. A friend who saw one in 1528 considered it wonderfully lifelike.1

A still greater artist was next to try his hand on the famous writer. When Albert Dürer came to the Netherlands in 1520-21, he met Erasmus several times and, about September 1, 1520, made two sketches of him in charcoal, apparently with the intention of turning one of them into a painting, though he never found time to do this. Six years later he made an etching from one study, a copy of which he sent to Erasmus, who, though he praised the artist's other work highly, did not care for this and thought it "nothing like," and was even reported to have said, "If I look like that I am a great knave." Indeed, neither of the two Dürer drawings was successful. The one, now at the Bonnat Museum, Paris, is nearly full-face. The half-closed, downcast eyes and the smiling mouth have a sweet expression not found so readily in the other portraits. The second sketch, worked up in the woodcut, is far more elaborate. The scholar is seated at his desk, writing, with a vase of flowers before him and surrounded by books. In one of the gouty hands is a quill, in the other the long,

1 Henry Botteus to Erasmus, March 6, 1528, Enthoven, no. 60. Erasmus to Botteus, March 29, 1528, LB. ep. 954. Haarhans, op. cit., Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 8 Jahrgang, p. 145. See Allen, ep. 1092, and reproduction of this medallion opposite.

A. Dürers Schriftlicher Nachlass, ed. Heidrich, 1908, p. 50, between August 28 and September 3, 1520. Cf. Lond. xxx, 29, 43; LB. epp. 631, 827, 954.

Luther's Tischreden, Weimar, vi, 1921, no. 6886.

narrow inkhorn.

The countenance, composed and earest, is less fine and less attractive than it appears elsewhere. In fact, the artist is not giving us a character study, but a bit of the genre he loved; it is not so much Erasmus we see here as the typical scholar.

This ill success did not prevent Dürer from becoming an excellent friend of his sitter. He gave him three of his own drawings, and made likenesses of many of his friends. One of these may possibly have been Sir Thomas More, who was at the time at the court of Charles V. But the portrait, if painted, has not been certainly identified.2

Various other likenesses of Erasmus made during these years can hardly be regarded as original studies. The best is perhaps an anonymous woodcut dated 1522, showing a fine profile. It claims to be drawn from life and bears the same inscription in Greek, meaning "His writings will show his image more truly," that is found on the medallion of 1519 and on the Dürer woodcut. In fact, not only this inscription, but the details of the posture, both here and in Dürer's woodcut, show that Matsys had created a type which other artists felt bound to follow. There are also extant a woodcut after Matsys ascribed to Cranach, a drawing by Jerome Hopfer probably after the medallion, but showing a more humorous expression, and a very poor drawing ascribed to Lucas van Leyden, dated 1521.

'Dürers Niederländische Reise, ed. J. Veth und S. Muller, 1918, i, 55, at Antwerp, August, 1520.

Preserved Smith: "Dürer's Portrait of Sir Thomas More," Scribner's Magazine, May, 1912. The painting that I there identified with Thomas More, now in possession of Mrs. John Lowell Gardner, of Boston, has been thought by others to be a portrait of Lorenz Sterck, though there is no proof save the fact that Dürer is known to have made Sterck's portrait in the year 1521. A. Dürers Niederländische Reise, von J. Veth und S. Muller. 2 vols. 1918, vol. i, plate 57. A few years after the appearance of my article there turned up in Canada another painting claiming to be by Dürer of Sir Thomas More. It is reproduced in Veth and Muller, op. cit., vol. ii. It was sold by G. A. Dostal of New York and Mme. Lucille Krier de Maucourant of Paris to G. F. Glason, of Montreal. New York Times, February 4, 1917. It is probably spurious.