Holbein was born in the free imperial city of Augsburg during the winter of
1497 or 1498. He was the son of a painter and draftsman Hans Holbein the elder,
whose trade he and his older brother Ambrosius followed. Holbein the elder ran
a large and busy workshop in Augsburg sometimes assisted by his brother
Sigmund also a painter. By 1515 Hans and Ambrosius had moved as journeyman
painters to the city of Basel the center of learning and the printing trade.
They were apprenticed to Hans Herbster, Basels leading painter. The brothers
found work as designers of wood cuts and metal cuts for printers, that same year
the preacher and theologian Oswald Myconius invited them to add pen
drawings to the margin of a copy of the Praise of Folly by the humanist scholar
Erasmus of Rotterdam. The sketches provided early evidence of Holbeins
wit and humanistic leaning, his other early works included the double portrait
of Basil's mayor Jakob Meyer zum Hasen and his wife Dorothea following his father's style.
In 1517 father and son began a project in Lucerne painting internal and
external murals for the merchant Jakob von Hertenstein. While in lucerne
Holbein also designed cartoons for stained glass. The city's record show
that on the tenth of December 1517 he was fined five livre for fighting in the street with a
goldsmith called Casper who was fined the same amount. In 1519 Holbein move
back to Basel his brother fades from the record about this time and it is usually
presumed that he died. Holbein re-established himself rapidly in the city,
running a busy workshop. He joined a painters guild and took out Basel
citizenship. He married Elsbeth Binsenstock-Schmid, a widow a few years older
than he was who had an infant son Franz, and was running her late husband's tanning business.
She bore Holbein a son of his own, Philipp, in their first year of marriage.
In a period of revolution in book design, he illustrated for the publisher Johann Froben.
his woodcut designs included those
for the Dance of Death which were illustrations of the Old Testament,
The title page of Martin Luther's Bible. Through the woodcut medium Holbein
refined his grasp of expressive and spatial effects. In 1523 Holbein painted
his first portraits of the great renaissance scholar Erasmus who required
likenesses to send to his friends and admirers throughout Europe, these
paintings made all by an international artist. Holbein visited France in 1524
probably to seek work at the court of Francis the first. When Holbein decided
to seek employment in England in 1526 Erasmus recommended him to his friend
and statesman and scholar Thomas More. "the arts are freezing in this part of
the world he wrote and he's on his way to England to pick up some angels"
Sir Thomas More welcomed him to England and found him a series of commissions
" your painter my dearest the Erasmus" he wrote "is a wonderful artist" Holbein painted
the famous portrait of Sir Thomas More and another of More with his family.
During this first stay in England Holbein work largely for a humanist
circle with ties to Erasmus. Among his commissions was a portrait of William
Warham Archbishop of Canterbury, who owned a Holbein portrait of Erasmus.
Holbein also painted the Bavarian astronomer and mathematician Nicholas Kratzer,
a tutor of the More family whose notes appear on Holbein's sketch for their group portrait.
Although Holbein did not work for the king during this visit,
he painted the portraits of courtiers such as Sir Henry Guildford
and his wife Lady Mary, and of Anne Lovell, recently identified
as the subject of Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling. The 29th of August 1528
Holbein bought a house in Basel in St Johanns-Vorstadt. He presumably
returned home to preserve his citizenship since he had been granted
only a two-year leave of absence. Enriched though by his success in
England Holbein bought a second house in the city in 1531.
During this period in Basel he painted the artist's family showing
Elsbeth but the couple's two eldest children Philip and Caterina evoking
images of the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist. Basel had become
a turbulent City in Holbeins absence and he decided it was time once again to
cross the English Channel. Holbein returned to England where the political and
religious environment was changing radically. In 1532 Henry the eighth was
preparing to repudiate Catherine of Aragon and marryy Anne Boleyn in defiance
of the Pope, but among those who opposed in his actions were Holbeins former
host and patron Sir Thomas More who resigned as Lord Chancellor in May 1532
The artist found favour instead with the radical new power circles of the Boleyn
family and Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell became the king secretary in 1534
controlling all aspects of the government including artistic propaganda
but More was executed in 1535 along with John Fisher whose portrait Holbein
had also drawn. Holbein commissions in the early stages of his second English
period included portraits of Lutheran merchants. The merchants lived and plied
their trade at the Steel Yard a complex of warehouses on the north bank of the
Thames, Holbein rented a house nearby in Maiden Lane. Throughout the Middle Ages
London's import and export trade blossomed, London during the Tudor period
transformed the city and its surrounds in which shipbuilding and Finance made
it a growing Empire and a world force. For Holbein his portrait of Georg Giese
Gdansk shows the merchant surrounded with exquisitely painted symbols of his trade.
Holbein also portrayed various courtiers landowners and visitors during
this time and his most famous painting of the period
was The Ambassador's, his life size panel portrays Jean de Dinteville
ambassador of Francis the first of France in 1533 and Georges de Selve the
Bishop of Lavor who visited London the same year. The working corporate symbols
and paradoxes including an anamorphic distorted skull. The same time Holbein
worked for Thomas Cromwell as he masterminded Henry the eighth's
reformation. Cromwell commissioned Holbein to produce reformist and
royalist images including anti-clerical wood cuts and the title page to Myles Coverdale's
English translation of the Bible. Henry VIII had embarked on a
grandiose programme of artistic patronage and his efforts to glorify
his new status as Supreme Head of the church culminated in the building of
Nonsuch Palace, started in 1538. By 1536 Holbein was employed as the Kings
painter on an annual salary of thirty pounds, though he was never the
highest-paid artist on the royal payroll. Jane Seymour died in October 1537
shortly after bearing Henry's only son Edward the sixth and Holbein painted a
portrait of the infant Prince about two years later clutching a scepter like gold rattle.
Holbeins portrait style altered after he entered Henry's service he
focus more intently on the city's face and clothing largely omitting props and
three-dimensional settings. He applied this clean craftsman light technique to
miniature portraits such as that of Jane Small and to the grand portraits such as
that of Cristina of Denmark. Holbein painted Anne of Cleves at Burgau Castle,
posing her square on and in elaborate finery. This was the woman whom Henry
married at the encouragement of Thomas Cromwell in the summer of 1539.
Henry was disillusioned with Anne in the flesh and he divorced her after a brief
unconsummated marriage. Holbein had deftly survived the downfall of his
first two great patrons Thomas More and Anne Boleyn that Cromwell sudden arrest and
execution on trumped-up charges of heresy and treason in 1540 undoubtedly damaged
his career, though Holbein retained his position as the king's painter.
Apart from routine official duties Holbein now occupied himself
with private Commission's he also painted some of the finest miniatures
including those of Henry Brandon and Charles Brandon who were sons of Henry
the eighth's friend Charles Brandon the first Duke of Suffolk and his fourth
wife Katherine Willoughby. Holbein may have visited his wife and children in late
1540 when his leave of absence from Basel expired that none of his work dates from
this period and the Basel authorities paid him six months salary in advance.
The state of Holbeins marriage has intrigued scholars who base their
speculations on fragmentary evidence. Apart from one brief visit, Holbein
lived apart from Elsbeth since 1532 but his will revealed that he had two
infant children in England of whom nothing is known except that they
were in care of a nurse. Holbeins unfaithfulness to Elsbeth may not be new
some scholars believe that Magdalena Offenburg, the model for the Darmstadt Madonna
and for two portraits painted in Basel was for a time Holbeins mistress,
Others dismiss the idea. One of the portraits was of Lais of Corinth,
mistress of Appel the famous artist of Greek antiquity after whom Holbein was
named in humanist circles. Whatever the case it is like that Holbein always
supported his wife and children. When Elsbeth died in 1549 she was well off
and still owned many of Holbeins fine clothes on the other hand she had sold
his portrait of her before his death. Holbein's fame owes something to that of his sitters.
Several of his portraits have become cultural icons he created the
standard image of Henry the eighth. In painting Henry as an iconic hero however
he also subtly conveyed the tyranny of his character. Hans Holbein died between
the 7th of October and May 29th November 1543 at the age of 45.
In the 18th century Holbein found favour in Europe with those who saw his precise arts as
an antidote to the Baroque. In England the connoisseur and antiquarian Horace
Walpole praised him as a master of the Gothic. Walpole hung his neo-Gothic house
at Strawberry Hill with copies of Holbeins and kept a Holbein room.
The current scholarly view of Holbeins art stresses
his versatility not only as a printer but as a draftsman a print maker and
designer all-in-all. Holbein the younger was simply a stroke of genius.
(Music)