Hans Holbein

“ Old Holbein seems to ape Leonardo, allowing his hair and beard to grow wildly, except on the upper lip. Hans the younger is a plain-looking boy. But his father points to him with his finger, and hints that though but a child he is clearly a prodigy.
After 1516 Hans Holbein the elder appears as a defaulter in the registers of the tax-gatherers at Augsburg; but he willingly accepts commissions abroad. At Issenheim in Alsace, where Grünewald was employed in 1516, old Holbein also finds patrons, and contracts to complete an altarpiece. ”

“ Hans Holbein the Elder, whose exceptional ability as an artist has always been overshadowed by the greater genius of his celebrated son, was one of the most representative painters of the Swabian School at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. ”

“ The work of Holbein is true and thorough, accomplished in the highest, as the most literal, sense, with a calm entireness of unaffected resolution which sacrifices nothing, forgets nothing, and fears nothing. Holbein is complete; what he sees, he sees with his whole soul ”

“ Holbein continued to live in London until the year 1554, when that city suffered a visitation of the plague, similar to that which was the occasion of the painting of the Great Dance of Death at Bâle. Holbein was struck by the disease; and Death, knowing gratitude as little as remorse, triumphed over him who had blazoned his triumphs. Upon the painter's fame, however, and that of his great work, Death could not lay his hand; but so long as the grim tyrant shall claim his victims, so long will he perpetuate the memory of Hans Holbein. ”

“ THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH Far more reliable proof as to the correct date of Holbein’s birth is afforded by the fine silver-point drawing by the elder painter, in the Berlin Museum, of the heads of his two sons (Pl. 6) . [75] Between the heads is written “Holbain,” and over that of the younger boy on the right the word “Hanns,” with the age “14” above the name. Over the head of the elder boy on the left the shortened name “Prosy” is still legible. Probably the first syllable, “Am,” has become obliterated in course of time, or it may be that the father merely set down his nickname, “Prosy.” ”

“ From the dazzle of history it is a bit difficult, at-44- first, to turn the inward eye upon art alone. But it is Hans Holbein whom we have really come to see. And he is here in his plenary pomp: in chalk drawings, miniatures in hone-stone, burnt wood, and enamel, and in easel-pictures of every sort.
No. 42, in the West Gallery, is an immense cartoon with outlines pricked, made for a fresco in the old Whitehall, comprising a life-sized group of the two Henries and their respective queens, the estate of only one of whom, had, as the modern world knows, finality. ”

“ THE ARTIST'S LIFE
If we may accept the balance of evidence, Hans Holbein was born in the last years of the fifteenth century in Augsburg, then a city of great importance. The visitor to Bavaria to-day will find few traces of its vanished prosperity, but in the years when Hans Holbein was a little boy Augsburg held merchant princes by the dozen, and men of distinction by the score, and enjoyed the favour of the Emperor Maximilian, himself no mean patron of the arts. ”

“ The so-called portraits of Holbein and his wife at Windsor have no claim to represent them; they are, moreover, painted on canvas, and signed by Hans Bock, a later painter at Basle. No artist's name has been so frequently and so wilfully misused in England as that of Hans Holbein. Very few authentic portraits by him remain in England. Among the many which bear his name, none can safely be considered authentic, in addition to those already mentioned, except the anonymous portrait of a man in the collection of Sir J. E. Millais, and the exquisite small square portrait of Henry VIII at Althorp. ”

“ To Holbein, who by no means regarded himself as a portrait-painter only, but to whom all decorative work, however large or however small, was equally an occasion for giving of the best that was in him, the ornamentation of a clock face would in no ways appear to be work in any way disgraceful or beneath him; nor is there the slightest evidence to show that he ran away from Basel like a thief in the night. Throughout his life, indeed, his methods were orderly, and such as became a citizen and guildsman of his adopted town. ”

“ In all these large decorative works Holbein displayed the greatest fertility of invention, and a power of dramatic composition of a very high order. The extraordinary energy of conception, the sense of life and movement in all his figures, the truth and expressiveness of their gestures, are all alike admirable. This dramatic power is at its finest in his wall-paintings for the Basel Town Hall—the “Rehoboam” and the “Samuel and Saul”; while in dignity and grandeur of composition, and the noble rhythm of its stately movement, the “Triumph of Riches” panel for the Steelyard is unsurpassed. ”

“ No great subtleties of light and shade are attempted, and his colour, beautiful and true as it is, helps but does not overpower his chief purpose—the complete realisation of the man both in body and soul. Holbein was a painter whose keenness of observation was extraordinary; he missed little or nothing, and saw much that lesser painters would have ignored. With his smooth, fusing methods of painting he reached to most marvellously delicate and 318accurate modelling of form, which in its expressiveness is beyond all words. ”

“ But I venture to suggest still another reason: this is, that in the uplifted, pleading face of the mendicant, whose expression of appeal and humility is a striking bit of realism in these ideal surroundings, we may have the actual portrait of the donor, Hans [Pg 91] Gerster himself. That this should be so would be in strict accord with the methods of the period. There is a striking parallel which will occur to all who are familiar with the St. Elizabeth in the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich. Here the undoubted portrait of Hans Holbein the elder is seen as the beggar in the background. ”

“ If in any branch of his art he can be said to have had a conscience at this period, we should say that he showed it in his portrait drawings. It is seldom that we find a painted likeness worthy of the name. The drawings of which numbers are still preserved in the galleries of Basel, Berlin and Copenhagen show extraordinary quickness and delicacy of hand, and a wonderful facility for seizing character; and this happily is one of the features which Holbein bequeathed to his more famous son, Hans the younger. ”

“ As far back as 1676 it was published by Patin in his edition of the Praise of Folly as Holbein’s portrait from his own hand. It bears, too, a strong likeness to the portraits of Holbein as a boy by the elder Hans, both in the “St. Paul” picture and in the drawing of 1511 of the two brothers at Berlin. There is the same massive head, with its fine forehead, breadth of cheek-bones, strong chin, and firm mouth. It has great resemblance, too, when due allowance has been made for the passing of twenty years or so, to the miniature portraits of himself which he painted at the end of his life. ”

“ The boisterous, even brutal, merriment of these fellow-countrymen of his, as they fling themselves into the pleasures of the dance with the utmost abandon, made an undoubted appeal to him, and in depicting them he expressed the joy of living which animates every movement with the utmost frankness and realism.
In this wide field of mural decoration and historical painting Holbein was the first and the greatest of those painters north of the Alps who came under the influence of the Italian revival of art. In him the Renaissance found very complete expression. ”

“ HOLBEIN, HANS (1497–1543) , painter, born at Augsburg in Swabia in 1497, was the younger son of Hans Holbein, a painter of that town, and grandson of Michel Holbein, who some time before 1454 came from the neighbouring village of Schönenfeld to settle in Augsburg. The name of Holbein's mother has not been ascertained. His father was a painter of great merit, and has left many pictures and drawings; in some cases his work has been with difficulty distinguished from that of his son. ”

“ Ganz’s Holbein, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, January 15, 1912, speaks of the “half-confidences” of Holbein’s portraiture, and holds that although the painter himself sees clearly the inmost depths of his sitters’ characters, he yet refrains from revealing them to us. When the moment comes for laying bare their deepest feelings “the prudent Swabian workman, through his instinctive reserve, holds back.” ”

“ It was to this effect: that when an aggrieved courtier complained to the king that the painter had taken precedence of him—a nobleman, the king replied, 'I have many noblemen, but I have only one Hans Holbein.' In fact, Holbein received nothing save kindness from Henry VIII.; and for that matter, there seemed to be something in common between bluff King Hal and the equally bluff German Hans. But on one occasion Hans Holbein was said to have run the risk of forfeiting his imperious master's favour by the too favourable miniature which the painter was accused of painting of Anne of Cleves. ”

“ He sees similar traits in Holbein’s sacred paintings, and this insensibility he regards as not real, but feigned, springing from the intelligence rather than from the heart. Lovers of Holbein’s art, however, will find it difficult to follow him in his contention.
As a draughtsman pure and simple he stands among the very highest; in some of the qualities of his line he has never been surpassed or even equalled. In the Windsor and kindred drawings, preliminary studies for his portraits, his genius finds its most perfect expression, and these are, in many ways, the greatest of his works. ”

“ By the great discovery of Hans Holbein's Will, found by Mr. Black in 1861 among the archives of St. Paul's Cathedral, it is proved that the painter made his Will on October 7th, and must have died between this and November 29th, 1543, when administration was granted to one of his executors (the other would seem to have perished, meanwhile, from the same epidemic) . This surviving executor was an old friend of the artist, whose portrait, in the Windsor Gallery, he had painted eleven years before—Hans of Antwerp, a master-goldsmith of the Steelyard. ”

“ The Town Council was no longer in a position to encourage the development of the fine arts, and the Basle painters had a very hard struggle to live, and were glad of trivial employment, which in better times they would have scorned. Holbein, too, had married, about 1520, Elsbeth Schmidt, the widow of a tanner with one son, and had a young family of his own, so that he found it increasingly difficult to make both ends meet. He therefore thought seriously of visiting England in quest of work, probably at the suggestion of Erasmus, who had many friends and correspondents there. ”

“ On a tablet below a wood engraving of his cutting representing a battle between peasants and naked men in a fir wood in Utopia, designed by the unknown Augsburg master N.H., he signs himself “Hanns. Levczellbvrger. fvrmschnider. 1.5.2.2.” At a later date, on the proofs of Holbein’s “Dance of Death” alphabet, he calls himself “Hanns Lützelburger, furmschneider, genant Franck,” that is, “Hans Lützelburger, wood-engraver, called Franck.” This is printed in movable type, the first H being an ornamented Roman capital, while the other letters of the name are in the German character. ”

“ THE NOSTELL PRIORY PICTURE The whole arrangement is of a somewhat formal and stately character, and both in the attitudes and occupations of the figures indicates a house of learning; even in the foreground books are scattered all over the floor. This masterly sketch, small as it is, is full of character. Each figure has marked individuality, and Holbein, with a few slight touches of his pencil, has in every case given a most truthful likeness, as may be proved by comparison with the larger studies of seven of the heads now in the Windsor Collection. ”

“ During the painting of the great family picture, or, in any case, while the preliminary studies were being made, and other single portraits of members of More’s household taken, Holbein, no doubt, remained as a guest at Chelsea, if only for the convenience of the several sitters, but that he stayed throughout the whole of his first English visit as More’s guest is doubtful. He would, naturally, wish for a studio and lodging of his own, however humble, where he would be free to do just as he liked. ”

“ It is possible that in its original state it was furnished with a pair of shutters. It is now generally agreed that its date is about 1525 or 1526, and that it was the last work of importance painted by Holbein before he left Basel. Meyer took a second wife in 1513, and their daughter Anna, who afterwards married Nikolaus Irmi, appears in the picture to be about the age of twelve, which gives the year 1526 as the one in which Holbein received the commission. Nothing is known of the two boys, who must have died young, for Meyer left no male heirs. ”

“ A man’s head, in a black cap, with a letter and penknife in his hand.” It is possible that it is the picture by “Holbin” of “a Dutchman sealing a letter,” which was in the Duke of Buckingham’s collection at York House in 1635, [31] from which it may have passed into that of Charles I. The picture, though it has not the richness and transparency of colour of the “Gisze,” or its extreme delicacy of execution and luxuriance of detail, is a vigorous and life-like representation of a somewhat stolid German, painted with the truth and sincerity which Holbein brought to everything he touched. ”