Solothurn Madonna, by Hans Holbein the Younger
The Solothurn Madonna was Holbein's first attempt at an ambitious Madonna. It was commissioned by Basel's town secretary, Johannes Gerster, and his wife Frau Barbara Guldinknopf. The piece takes the form of a sacra conversatione, a depiction of a group of saints around the Virgin Mary. The purpose of the work was probably that of an epitaph in the northern tradition, a devotional piece in memory of the family. According to art historians Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener, the bishop on the left giving arms to a beggar is St Martin, and the knight on the right is one of the saints martyred for their faith in the Theban legion. He may be St Ursus, a saint connected with the church of St Martin in Basel, which had received some bones, supposed to be of St Ursus, unearthed at Solothurn in 1473. Art historian John Rowlands speculated that the bishop might be St Nicholas, who is depicted on his mitre, and the knight perhaps St George.
By the 17th century, the painting was lost, but it was rediscovered in 1864 in a tiny chapel at Grenchen, near Solothurn, in a parlous condition and riddled with woodworm. It was repainted unsatisfactorily by the restorer and faker Andreas Eigner, somewhat in the style of the Nazarene movement. The restoration of 1971 returned it to a version as close to the original as possible given the irreparable damage. (References: Bätschmann & Pascal Griener, pp. 98–100; John Rowlands, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, Boston: David R. Godine, 1985, ISBN 0879235780, p. 127; Pascal Griener, "Alfred Woltmann and the Holbein Dispute, 1863–71", in Mark Roskill & John Oliver Hand (eds), Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints, and Reception, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2001, ISBN 0300090447, pp. 215–17.)
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