Hans Holbein, the Younger

German artist

• Born: 1497 or 1498
• Birthplace: Augsburg, Bishopric of Augsburg (now in Germany)
• Died: 1543
• Place of death: London, England

A master of portraits and an excellent draftsman, Holbein was an important transitional figure in European art. Holbein’s portraits offer a revealing look at the personalities of his time.

Early Life

Hans Holbein (hahns HOHL-bin), the Younger, was born in the city of Augsburg, at that time an important commercial center of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holbein family was an artistic one: Hans Holbein, the Elder, was a widely known painter, much sought after for his skill in portraits, while his brother Sigmund was also an artist. The younger Holbein and his brother, Ambrosius, spent their early years learning the craft of painting from their father.

In 1515, Holbein moved to Basel, Switzerland, where he came to the attention of the noted printer and publisher Johann Froben, also known as Frobenius. Holbein was soon actively designing book illustrations and title-page borders for Froben and other printers in Basel. Since Froben was a publisher of Desiderius Erasmus, a noted Humanist scholar, Holbein came to know the internationally famous writer. Through Erasmus, Holbein was introduced to the circle of Humanist thinkers and leaders of the time. Holbein made other important contacts, including a 1516 commission to paint the portrait of Jacob Mayer, burgomaster of Basel, and his wife; this work is an early indication of Holbein’s mastery of the portrait genre. During this time, he also produced several conventional religious paintings, a form of art popular at the time.

From 1517 to 1519, Holbein was away from Basel, perhaps traveling with his father on commissions in Switzerland, perhaps on a brief visit to northern Italy. By the fall of 1519, he had returned to Basel, for on September 25 of that year he was admitted as a master in the Painters’ Guild. The next year, Holbein became a citizen of the town and married Elsbeth Schmid, the widow of a tanner; the couple had four children.

Holbein received a considerable amount of work in Basel, primarily designs and illustrations for printers but also a series of religious paintings influenced by his contemporary Albrecht Dürer; mural decorations for the Basel Town Hall; and more portraits, including his 1519 portrayal of the lawyer and scholar Bonifacius Amerbach. This portrait is the first showing Holbein’s true genius in portraiture; fittingly, Amerbach later became the earliest collector of Holbein and preserved much of his work. In 1523, Holbein produced his first portrait of Erasmus; a second soon followed, which Erasmus sent to his friend Sir Thomas More in England. The English connection, so important in Holbein’s life and career, was soon to be established.

A number of Holbein self-portraits have survived. They show him with a square, rather full face; a short, neatly trimmed beard but no mustache; and hair that was dark and worn moderately long. The most notable features are his mouth, firmly and tightly closed, and his eyes, which have a careful, wary expression. It is not the face of someone who revealed himself lightly or freely.

Life’s Work

During the mid-1520’s, the Protestant Reformation swept through Basel and the climate for the visual arts became much less favorable than before. In 1524, Holbein found it convenient to depart on an extended visit to France, where he was exposed to the influence of Italian painting, including the work of Leonardo da Vinci. In August of 1526, he left Basel again, this time for England. He carried with him a letter of introduction from Erasmus; once in England, he was welcomed into the household of Erasmus’s good friend Sir Thomas More.

Through More, Holbein had an entry into the court of Henry VIII , then approaching the apogee of its brilliance. While Holbein did execute some decorations for court pageants, his initial relationship with the monarch was not as close as it would later become. Instead, he concentrated on portraits of prominent individuals and groups. One of his most striking works from this time, a group portrait of the More family (most likely painted in 1528) has been lost, but the preparatory drawings remain. As always, Holbein captures the character of his sitters with deft precision; equally important, this group portrait is the first known example in northern European art where the figures are shown sitting or standing in natural positions, rather than kneeling, a definite break with the religiously oriented art of the Middle Ages.

In 1528, Holbein returned to Basel, probably because of a previous agreement with the town council, since he promptly resumed his work of public commissions, devoting much time and energy to them over the next two years. The financial rewards seem to have been considerable, since he was able to purchase a new house and, in 1531, to buy the adjoining property as well. The same year as his return, Holbein was admitted into the Lutheran faith. Within two years, and certainly by late 1520, however, Holbein seems to have ceased all work in the area of religious painting, once a staple of any artist’s career. Perhaps that reflected the preferences of the Reformation; it certainly allowed Holbein’s talents to flow into paintings and portraits that favored his realistic and psychological technique.

Holbein’s ability in portraiture reached its most profound and personal depths in his Portrait of His Wife and Two Elder Children (1528). In this searching, almost painful work, Holbein presents part of the family from which he was so long and so often absent. The painter’s wife, Elsbeth, seems weary, perhaps sad; has this been caused by the absence of the artist who still records her features so faithfully? That is impossible to determine, but the technical mastery of the work is undoubted, as is its debt to Holbein’s study of the works of Leonardo.

Leaving his wife and children in Basel, Holbein returned to England in 1532; he would remain there for the remainder of his life. His friend More had fallen from the king’s favor over the matter of divorcing Queen Catherine of Aragon and the marriage to Anne Boleyn, so Holbein first concentrated on a series of portraits of German merchants living in London. Called the “Steelyard portraits,” after the section of town where the sitters lived, these works marked a new development in Holbein’s art. His acute perceptions of character increased, his draftsmanship acquired new and fluid power, and attention was focused on the person, because backgrounds and surroundings were greatly simplified.

Holbein also began to paint portraits of members of the court, including Thomas Cromwell, More’s successor as lord chancellor; eventually, Holbein came to the attention of Henry himself. In 1537, Holbein executed a fresco for the royal palace of Whitehall, which brought him considerable fame (the work was destroyed in a 1698 fire). In 1538 came the first entry in the royal accounts of a salary paid to Holbein, indicating that he had officially entered the service of the king. Over the next five years, he would complete more than 150 portraits, in oils, chalk, and silverpoint, capturing some of the most influential and memorable figures from one of England’s most turbulent periods. Holbein also remained active in preparing illustrations for printers, including the woodcut borders for the important English Bible of 1535, and he designed costumes, jewelry, cups, and other art objects for the court.

Holbein’s portraits remain his most important and enduring work. Among his sitters were Henry VIII and most of the major figures of his court, including several of Henry’s wives. Most of these works have survived in chalk, or pen-and-ink studies, rather than completed oils, yet they all retain the vitality and insight that Holbein brought to his work. Some of them, such as the stunning full-length portrait Christiana of Denmark, Duchess of Milan (1538), rank among Holbein’s supreme achievements.

The portrait of Christiana was painted for one of the frequent marriage negotiations engaged in by Henry; he often assigned Holbein to capture the likeness of a prospective bride. One of these, Holbein’s study of Anne of Cleves (1539), seems to have been Holbein’s downfall. Pleased by the portrait, Henry agreed to the marriage, but within six months he divorced the woman he called “the Flanders mare.” After this, there were no more important royal commissions for Holbein.

Holbein continued to live in London, securing work from other patrons. His last portrait of Henry, for example, is that of the king granting a charter to the Barber-Surgeon’s Company. The work was painted for that guild and was commissioned in 1541. Significantly, Holbein did not paint Henry from life but rather copied him from earlier works. Holbein did not live to complete the painting, for he died during an outbreak of the plague in London in 1543. His wife and children in Basel were attended to by his estate there and by a pension negotiated with the town council. In his last will in England, Holbein left funds for the keeping of two young children there. He was forty-five or forty-six years old when he died.

Significance

Hans Holbein, the Younger, marks a turning point in the development of European art. His portraits show a decisive change from the older, religious orientation to the newer, more secular and worldly temper of the Renaissance and modern times. A number of critics have remarked on a lack of spiritual involvement by Holbein with his work, and perhaps Holbein did concentrate on the actual, the physical, and the immediate. That was appropriate, however, for his sitters were men and women of intense individuality, and often of supreme ambition; their concerns were often not spiritual but temporal. Holbein’s portraits may lack piety, but they have psychological insight, an insight that he captured not by hands clasped in prayer or holding a Bible but by hands fingering a jewel given by Henry VIII or the look of shrewd eyes calculating the latest events in the king’s court. With Holbein, medieval painting departs and the art of the modern world begins.

Even in his religious paintings, Holbein took a new and sometimes disturbing stance. One of his most famous works, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521-1522), has intrigued and unsettled viewers since its creation. Some have complained that the painting dwells too closely on the material nature of Christ, slighting the spiritual side. While other religious paintings of the time used Christ’s physical sufferings as an aid to devotion and meditation, Holbein’s work is different and evokes different responses, because of the intense, unflinching realism in which it is rendered. There is no softening or evading the facts of brutal bodily injury and certain death.

Occupying a pivotal point in European artistic development, Holbein was not entirely a modern painter. The influence of older forms is seen most clearly in his woodcuts and illustrations, in particular the Dance of Death series, designed from 1522 through 1524, and executed by the brilliant woodblock carver Hans Lützelburger. Although not published until 1538, this series is one of the most famous variants on the “Dance macabre” theme so popular in the Middle Ages.

It is Holbein’s portraits, however, which are the key to his work. His technical mastery is unmatched, and his ceaseless efforts at perfection allowed him to produce a series of masterpieces of psychological interpretation. Most famous are the portraits Holbein produced at the court of Henry VIII, which have left for later generations a true sense of the important and intriguing figures of the time, from the king himself to his friend and victim, Sir Thomas More. In these and other drawings, portraits, and paintings, Holbein captured the essence of the northern Renaissance and the men and women who created it. Through the works of Holbein, that world comes to life in all its vibrant energy.

Bibliography

Bätschmann, Oskar, and Pascal Griener. Hans Holbein. Translated by Cecilia Hurley and Pascal Griener. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Important analysis of Holbein’s entire corpus, ranging from general insights into the artist’s place in political and artistic history to close readings of paintings to diverting anecdotes about specific incidents in Holbein’s career. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Brooke, Xanthe, and David Crombie. Henry VIII Revealed: Holbein’s Portrait and Its Legacy. London: Paul Holberton, 2003. Extremely detailed study of Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII, incorporating high-tech analysis of the physical paintings, historical research on Henry’s court and the artist’s workshop, and surveys of the effects of the painting, both on Holbein’s contemporary culture and on subsequent portrayals of Henry in literature, film, and television. Includes illustrations, map, bibliographic references, index.

Buck, Stephanie, and Jochen Sander. Hans Holbein the Younger: Painter at the Court of Henry VIII. London: Thames and Hudson 2004. Monograph surveying Holbein’s career in England provides biographical insight, analysis of the paintings, biographies of their subjects, and explications of the important movements and cultural influences on the artist’s work. Includes 60 color and 120 black-and-white illustrations.

Holbein, Hans, the Younger. Holbein. Introduction by Roy Strong. New York: Rizzoli, 1980. This slender volume is part of the Every Painting series. Gives a rapid visual overview of Holbein’s career. Especially useful in conjunction with the other readings suggested here.

Hueffer, Ford Madox. Hans Holbein the Younger: A Critical Monograph. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1905. A perceptive, if sometimes highly individual, study of Holbein’s work by the famous English novelist, better known as Ford Madox Ford. The book does well in placing Holbein within the atmosphere of the Renaissance and provides a good, if idiosyncratic, overview of his achievement.

Roberts, Jane. Holbein. London: Oresko Books, 1979. A good study of Holbein’s art, with particular emphasis on the drawings and portraits of his two English sojourns. There is a brief but generally informative biography.

Rowlands, John. Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger. Oxford, England: Phaidon Press, 1985. Essentially a study of Holbein’s works in oil, this book contains an excellent introductory biography. Very helpful in providing accessible critical commentary on the artist’s work.

Strong, Roy. Holbein and Henry VIII. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967. A volume in the Studies in British Art series, this work provides an extensive review of Holbein’s relationship with the Tudor court. In addition to the paintings and drawings, Holbein was productive in all aspects of decorations and embellishments.

Wilson, Derek. Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996. Imaginative and frankly speculative biography of Holbein argues for the importance of his youth in Basel, the center of the Reformation, in influencing his later life and career.