form the perfect harmony of the whole.

We cannot too greatly admire the singular clearness and extraordinary
precision with which the artist has placed in relief every detail that
can make a figure live and render a work essentially eloquent.[7]

People have tried to make out that Georg Gisze was a merchant of Basle.
He would then have been of the race connected most closely with the
Master's life. This opinion has been discussed by Woltmann, Holbein's
historian. The superscriptions on the sufficiently numerous letters,
which are reproduced in this painting, must be especially noticed; they
are written in an ancient dialect which seems rather to be that of
central Germany.[8]

Jouin, _Chefs-d'oeuvre: Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture_
(Paris, 1895-97).

FOOTNOTES:

[7] In one corner of the picture is found this inscription with its
Latin distich:

Imaginem Georgii Gysenii
Ista refert vultus, quâ cernis Imago Georgi
Sic oculos vivos, sic habet ille genas.
Anno ætatis suæ XXXIII.
Anno dom. 1532.

[8] We read on one of these letters: _Dem erszamen Jergen Gisze to
Lunden in Engelant, mynem broder to handen._