Johann Froben was another of these; and from 1515 until Froben's death eleven years later Holbein had more and more to do for this printer. Occasionally, too, he drew for other Basel printers; but not often. The eighty-two sketches on the margins of that priceless copy of the _Praise of Folly_, which Basel preserves in her Museum, had been suited to their company. Admirable, though unequal, as are their merits, they _are_ sketches, whose chief beauty is their happy spontaneity. Such things are among the trifles of art, and are not to be put into the scales at all with the finished perfection of his serious designs for wood engraving. These were drawn on the block; and even these cannot properly represent the drawing itself except when cut by some such master hand as his own. Since in preparing the design for printing the background is cut away, leaving the composition itself in lines of relief,--it follows that everything, so far as the reproduction is concerned, must depend upon the cleanness and delicacy of the actual cutting. A clouded eye, a fumbling touch, and the most ethereal idea becomes its travesty--the purest line debased. Hence the necessity for taking the knife into consideration in judging such work.
This is not the place for any fraction of that hot debate which Kugler ironically styles "the great question of the sixteenth century"; the debate as to whether Holbein himself did or did not cut any of his own blocks. Assuredly he could do so. The exquisite adjustment of every line to its final purpose, the masterly understanding of the proper limitations and field of every effect, all prove that he had an unerring knowledge of the craft no less than of the art of Illustration. But in his day that craft, like every other, had its own guild; and it would not have been likely to tolerate any intrusion on its rights.
We know, too, that those woodcuts which most attest Holbein's genius were engraved by that mysterious "Hans Lützelburger, form-cutter, called Franck" (_Hans Lützelburger, Formschnider, genannt Franck_), who still remains, after all the researches of enthusiastic admirers, a hand and a name, and beyond this--nothing. But it is when Holbein's designs are engraved with Lützelburger's astonishingly beautiful cutting that we can appreciate how wonderful was the design itself. To compare these fairy pictures with the painter's large cartoons is to get some conception of the arc his powers described. It seems incredible that the same hand could hang an equal majesty on the wall of a tiny shell and on that of a king's palace, and with equal justness of eye. Yet it is done. He will ride a donkey or an elephant with the like mastery; but you will never find Holbein saddling the donkey with a howdah.