Fame travelled slowly in the sixteenth century, but it had not so far to go as it must to-day. The art centres were small and few, they belonged exclusively to the western world, and there were no swarms of influential mediocrities to secure work that belonged of right to better men. Then again, even in those days, when war was still considered in certain quarters to be the only occupation for a gentleman, art knew no boundaries in the civilised world, and the artist, as a valued contributor to the beauty of life, could pass through countries in which his countrymen of other pursuits would have received scant welcome. Of course there were exceptions to this general rule, and curiously enough Basle, in which the Lutherans were gaining ground so rapidly, had become an impossible place for Holbein by the summer of 1526. Moreover, there was trouble with the famous or notorious Dorothea Offenburg, who would seem to have been a mistress of the painter. Apparently his marriage was dictated more by convenience than affection, and the catholicity of his taste was not limited to things of art. Holbein painted the fair Dorothea twice, apparently in 1526, once as "Venus" and once as "Lais of Corinth." Each portrait may be seen in the large salon of the Museum, and the attractions of the lady must have been more apparent to the painter than they are to us. Some say that it was his desire to flee from before the face of his inamorata that turned Holbein's feet towards London, others that it was the strength of the Lutheran movement that made men look askance at the arts. Be that as it may he came to town, and Basle's loss was England's gain.
It may be remarked here, that while Holbein's long stay in Basle had not been interrupted, there is evidence to suggest, if not to prove, that he followed Amerbach to France. Doubtless his position enabled him to gratify any reasonable desire to travel; and in houses long since demolished, for families long fallen from their high estate if not altogether lost, he may have painted portraits and decorated private chapels or turned his rare gift as miniaturist to good account. No _flâneur_ on the high-road of sixteenth-century life, no chronicler of the times and changes of his generation, has anything to record, because the world then took no count of the coming or going of the great men who claimed fame through the arts.