Madonna in trono col Bambino e due figure

Holbein painted this in Basel in 1522, and the two saints beside the Virgin belong to the city that now owns it. On the right stands Ursus, patron of Solothurn, in a soldier's armour. On the left is Martin of Tours as a bishop, handing a coin to a kneeling beggar. For the Virgin herself Holbein used his own wife, Elsbeth, and the child is thought to be modelled on their infant son Philipp. He was working in Basel just as the Reformation was arriving, and within a few years demand for altarpieces like this would dry up, pushing him to leave for England and the court of Henry the Eighth. The panel itself vanished for a long time and turned up again in 1864, in poor condition, in a small chapel near Solothurn.