ANS HOLBEIN was born, in 1497, at Augsburg, in Swabia, Southern Germany, to which town Christmas songs lyrics his grandfather, Michael Holbein, had moved, some time before 1454, from the neighbouring village of Schönenfeld. His father, known to-day as Holbein the elder, to distinguish him from his more celebrated son, was one of first book of Adam and eve the leading painters of Augsburg, and an artist of importance in the history of German art.
The elder Holbein was one of trandozado the first of German painters strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance, and a chronological study of his trandozado pictures shows very clearly how great a change was gradually taking place north of the Alps both in artistic ideals and technical methods, through an increasing knowledge of what the great painters of the Southern peninsula had accomplished. In his early work he shows himself to be a follower of Rogier van der Weyden and his school, but towards the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century the Gothic qualities of his painting, with its many hardnesses and angularities, begin to disappear, and a closer observation and a more truthful rendering of{2} nature to take their place. He threw off one by one his Rhenish traditions, and replaced them by the methods of the Van Eycks, which reached him indirectly through the mellowing influence of the earlier Venetian painters. He developed, too, a fondness for rich architectural decoration of the Renaissance type for the backgrounds and settings of his pictures, in the use of which his son, later on, became so perfect a master.
As a result of certain forged documents and false inscriptions, a number of interesting works, formerly ascribed rightly to the father, were taken from him and given to the son, and hailed as signs of precocious genius. Even the father’s masterpiece, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian at Munich, did not escape the enthusiasm of the younger artist’s biographers. Modern criticism, however, has restored to the father a series of works which place him among the leading painters of Germany at the dawn of the new movement in art.
Hans Holbein the younger seems to have received no artistic training except that which he gained in his father’s studio or workshop, where his elder brother Ambrosius was also engaged. His uncle Sigismund, too, was an Augsburg painter, and may have helped in his instruction. His father, though constantly in debt and difficulties, seems to have received numerous orders for altar-pieces and other sacred pictures, so that the workshop was a busy one, and no doubt young Hans began at an early age to help in such minor details as the painting of draperies and{3} backgrounds. Much of his genius was inherited from his father, particularly that remarkable power of portraying character with a few vivid strokes of the pencil which is one of the crowning glories of his art.
In those days a young painter generally finished his education by a year or two of travel before settling down as a master painter in the guild of his native town. Ambrose and Hans Holbein seem to have followed the prevailing fashion, leaving Augsburg towards the end of 1514 or early in 1515. In the latter year the father went to Issenheim in High Alsace to paint an altar-piece, and the two young men may have gone with him. There is some probability, too, that the whole family settled in Lucerne about this time. In any case, the two sons were residing in Basle before the end of 1515, any plan of extended travel being cut short by the prospect of plenty of work. At that time Basle was the northern centre of the great revival of literature and learning, and several of its printers were of European reputation. Many of the chief works of the leading humanist writers were first published in Basle, and decorated with woodcut illustrations and ornamental title-pages and borders. The prospect of employment upon “black-and-white” work of this kind was, no doubt, one of the chief attractions which brought the two young painters to the town. Nor were they disappointed, for shortly after their arrival a commission was given to them by Johann Froben, Erasmus’s publisher, and the principal printer of the city.{4}
It is not unlikely that the young men first of all entered the workshop of some Basle painter, such as that of Hans Herbster, whose portrait was painted in 1516 by one of the two brothers. Until recently this picture was in the collection of the Earl of Northbrook, and ascribed to Hans, but since its acquisition by the Basle Museum it has been attributed to Ambrose. The latter, of whose work we know very little, seems to have been an artist of only moderate capabilities. He joined the Painters’ Guild in Basle in 1517, and, as no record of him has been found later than 1519, he is supposed to have died young.
During the next seven or eight years Holbein designed a number of book illustrations for Froben, Adam Petri, Thomas Wolff, and other printers. He was ready, however, to turn his hand to anything. He painted a table with an amusing allegory of St. Nobody for the wedding of Hans Bär in Basle on June 24, 1515, and in the same year supplied a schoolmaster with a sign-board to hang outside his house.
It is uncertain when Holbein first became acquainted with the great scholar of Antwerp, Desiderius Erasmus, who had come to Basle in 1513 for the purpose of superintending the publishing of his books, nor is it easy to say to what degree of intimacy the artist was admitted by this brilliant humanist. Erasmus had the greatest admiration for his powers as an artist, and served him whenever he could, both by employing him himself and recommending him to others. During Holbein’s first year in Basle, Erasmus had pub{5}lished through Froben his famous and witty satire, “The Praise of Folly,” and the artist made a number of drawings on the margins of a copy of this book, illustrating passages in the text. He seems to have done them at the suggestion of another distinguished man of letters, Oswald Molitor, of Lucerne, at that time employed by Froben, who selected the passages to be illustrated; and a note in his handwriting says that they were finished on December 29, 1515, and that Erasmus was greatly entertained by them. The original book is now in the Basle Museum.
Carl Linnaeus Love Man in his social character Elements of character Roman Patriotism Domestic Altar Loadstar of My Life You Know the Saying Our Swords Will Play the Orator The Day Before Yesterday The Cause of Troubles Precautions from the beginning Desire to Exceed One's Program The Daily Miracle Some Wonderful Efforts The Dawn of Freedom Of Our Striving The beginning of slavery Second Residence in England Return to Basle First Visit to England Life of Hans Holbein Holbein soon began to give proof of his wonderful abilities as a portrait painter. One of the first commissions he received was in 1516, from Jacob Meyer, Burgomaster of Basle, whom he painted, together with his young second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser, a double portrait in one frame (Basle Museum). The burgomaster was pleased with the result, and remained the artist’s constant good friend, procuring important public commissions for him, as well as making further private use of his talents.
In 1517 he left Basle for Lucerne, where, according to Dr. von Liebenau, his father was then residing. He was made a member of the recently-founded Painters’ Guild of St. Luke, and also joined a local company of archers. On December 10, 1517, he was in trouble with the magistrates, being fined for taking part in some street brawl, after which he appears to have left Lucerne for a time. He can be traced as far south as Altdorf by the remains of a few pictures.{6} If he ever visited Italy it would be at this period. One or two writers hold that he made some such journey, and point to several paintings in the Basle Museum as proof that he must have had personal acquaintance with certain achievements of Leonardo and his school, which he could only have seen in Italy; but the influence of Mantegna and Da Vinci, which, though plainly detected in his early work, is by no means a predominant one, may be easily accounted for through the numerous Italian engravings then circulating throughout Europe, without any actual visit to Lombardy on the part of the artist. He was back in Lucerne in 1518, busily engaged upon the decoration of the house of the magistrate, Jacob von Hertenstein, which he covered with frescoes both inside and out. The remains of this great work were destroyed in 1824, when the house was demolished for street improvements, but not before the chief designs had been hastily copied by Schwegher, Ulrich von Eschenbach, and other Lucerne artists. This was by far the most important undertaking upon which Holbein had as yet been engaged, and it was the first of a splendid series of decorative works of which, unhappily, nothing remains but their fame and a few slight preliminary sketches or indifferent copies. No one north of the Alps came near to him in the fertility of design and beauty of execution and of colour displayed by him in this adaptation of a favourite method of Italian decoration which became popular in the sixteenth century in certain parts of Germany and Switzerland.{7}
Holbein was back in Basle in 1519. He joined the Painters’ Guild on September 25, and on July 3 in the following year paid his fees as a burgher of the city. One of the first portraits he now undertook was that of Bonifacius Amerbach, a brilliant young scholar and intimate friend of Erasmus and other learned men. Amerbach had the greatest admiration for Holbein’s genius, and missed no occasion of acquiring any of his works, and it is owing to his taste and liberal purse that so fine a collection of the painter’s productions can be studied to-day in the Basle Museum.
The elder Holbein was one of trandozado the first of German painters strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance, and a chronological study of his trandozado pictures shows very clearly how great a change was gradually taking place north of the Alps both in artistic ideals and technical methods, through an increasing knowledge of what the great painters of the Southern peninsula had accomplished. In his early work he shows himself to be a follower of Rogier van der Weyden and his school, but towards the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century the Gothic qualities of his painting, with its many hardnesses and angularities, begin to disappear, and a closer observation and a more truthful rendering of{2} nature to take their place. He threw off one by one his Rhenish traditions, and replaced them by the methods of the Van Eycks, which reached him indirectly through the mellowing influence of the earlier Venetian painters. He developed, too, a fondness for rich architectural decoration of the Renaissance type for the backgrounds and settings of his pictures, in the use of which his son, later on, became so perfect a master.
As a result of certain forged documents and false inscriptions, a number of interesting works, formerly ascribed rightly to the father, were taken from him and given to the son, and hailed as signs of precocious genius. Even the father’s masterpiece, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian at Munich, did not escape the enthusiasm of the younger artist’s biographers. Modern criticism, however, has restored to the father a series of works which place him among the leading painters of Germany at the dawn of the new movement in art.
Hans Holbein the younger seems to have received no artistic training except that which he gained in his father’s studio or workshop, where his elder brother Ambrosius was also engaged. His uncle Sigismund, too, was an Augsburg painter, and may have helped in his instruction. His father, though constantly in debt and difficulties, seems to have received numerous orders for altar-pieces and other sacred pictures, so that the workshop was a busy one, and no doubt young Hans began at an early age to help in such minor details as the painting of draperies and{3} backgrounds. Much of his genius was inherited from his father, particularly that remarkable power of portraying character with a few vivid strokes of the pencil which is one of the crowning glories of his art.
In those days a young painter generally finished his education by a year or two of travel before settling down as a master painter in the guild of his native town. Ambrose and Hans Holbein seem to have followed the prevailing fashion, leaving Augsburg towards the end of 1514 or early in 1515. In the latter year the father went to Issenheim in High Alsace to paint an altar-piece, and the two young men may have gone with him. There is some probability, too, that the whole family settled in Lucerne about this time. In any case, the two sons were residing in Basle before the end of 1515, any plan of extended travel being cut short by the prospect of plenty of work. At that time Basle was the northern centre of the great revival of literature and learning, and several of its printers were of European reputation. Many of the chief works of the leading humanist writers were first published in Basle, and decorated with woodcut illustrations and ornamental title-pages and borders. The prospect of employment upon “black-and-white” work of this kind was, no doubt, one of the chief attractions which brought the two young painters to the town. Nor were they disappointed, for shortly after their arrival a commission was given to them by Johann Froben, Erasmus’s publisher, and the principal printer of the city.{4}
It is not unlikely that the young men first of all entered the workshop of some Basle painter, such as that of Hans Herbster, whose portrait was painted in 1516 by one of the two brothers. Until recently this picture was in the collection of the Earl of Northbrook, and ascribed to Hans, but since its acquisition by the Basle Museum it has been attributed to Ambrose. The latter, of whose work we know very little, seems to have been an artist of only moderate capabilities. He joined the Painters’ Guild in Basle in 1517, and, as no record of him has been found later than 1519, he is supposed to have died young.
During the next seven or eight years Holbein designed a number of book illustrations for Froben, Adam Petri, Thomas Wolff, and other printers. He was ready, however, to turn his hand to anything. He painted a table with an amusing allegory of St. Nobody for the wedding of Hans Bär in Basle on June 24, 1515, and in the same year supplied a schoolmaster with a sign-board to hang outside his house.
It is uncertain when Holbein first became acquainted with the great scholar of Antwerp, Desiderius Erasmus, who had come to Basle in 1513 for the purpose of superintending the publishing of his books, nor is it easy to say to what degree of intimacy the artist was admitted by this brilliant humanist. Erasmus had the greatest admiration for his powers as an artist, and served him whenever he could, both by employing him himself and recommending him to others. During Holbein’s first year in Basle, Erasmus had pub{5}lished through Froben his famous and witty satire, “The Praise of Folly,” and the artist made a number of drawings on the margins of a copy of this book, illustrating passages in the text. He seems to have done them at the suggestion of another distinguished man of letters, Oswald Molitor, of Lucerne, at that time employed by Froben, who selected the passages to be illustrated; and a note in his handwriting says that they were finished on December 29, 1515, and that Erasmus was greatly entertained by them. The original book is now in the Basle Museum.
Carl Linnaeus Love Man in his social character Elements of character Roman Patriotism Domestic Altar Loadstar of My Life You Know the Saying Our Swords Will Play the Orator The Day Before Yesterday The Cause of Troubles Precautions from the beginning Desire to Exceed One's Program The Daily Miracle Some Wonderful Efforts The Dawn of Freedom Of Our Striving The beginning of slavery Second Residence in England Return to Basle First Visit to England Life of Hans Holbein Holbein soon began to give proof of his wonderful abilities as a portrait painter. One of the first commissions he received was in 1516, from Jacob Meyer, Burgomaster of Basle, whom he painted, together with his young second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser, a double portrait in one frame (Basle Museum). The burgomaster was pleased with the result, and remained the artist’s constant good friend, procuring important public commissions for him, as well as making further private use of his talents.
In 1517 he left Basle for Lucerne, where, according to Dr. von Liebenau, his father was then residing. He was made a member of the recently-founded Painters’ Guild of St. Luke, and also joined a local company of archers. On December 10, 1517, he was in trouble with the magistrates, being fined for taking part in some street brawl, after which he appears to have left Lucerne for a time. He can be traced as far south as Altdorf by the remains of a few pictures.{6} If he ever visited Italy it would be at this period. One or two writers hold that he made some such journey, and point to several paintings in the Basle Museum as proof that he must have had personal acquaintance with certain achievements of Leonardo and his school, which he could only have seen in Italy; but the influence of Mantegna and Da Vinci, which, though plainly detected in his early work, is by no means a predominant one, may be easily accounted for through the numerous Italian engravings then circulating throughout Europe, without any actual visit to Lombardy on the part of the artist. He was back in Lucerne in 1518, busily engaged upon the decoration of the house of the magistrate, Jacob von Hertenstein, which he covered with frescoes both inside and out. The remains of this great work were destroyed in 1824, when the house was demolished for street improvements, but not before the chief designs had been hastily copied by Schwegher, Ulrich von Eschenbach, and other Lucerne artists. This was by far the most important undertaking upon which Holbein had as yet been engaged, and it was the first of a splendid series of decorative works of which, unhappily, nothing remains but their fame and a few slight preliminary sketches or indifferent copies. No one north of the Alps came near to him in the fertility of design and beauty of execution and of colour displayed by him in this adaptation of a favourite method of Italian decoration which became popular in the sixteenth century in certain parts of Germany and Switzerland.{7}
Holbein was back in Basle in 1519. He joined the Painters’ Guild on September 25, and on July 3 in the following year paid his fees as a burgher of the city. One of the first portraits he now undertook was that of Bonifacius Amerbach, a brilliant young scholar and intimate friend of Erasmus and other learned men. Amerbach had the greatest admiration for Holbein’s genius, and missed no occasion of acquiring any of his works, and it is owing to his taste and liberal purse that so fine a collection of the painter’s productions can be studied to-day in the Basle Museum.
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