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HANS HOLBEIN

Bell’s Miniature Series of Painters.

Edited by G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D.

_Pott 8vo., with 8 Illustrations, issued in cloth or in limp leather._

VELAZQUEZ. By G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D. SIR E. BURNE-JONES. By MALCOLM BELL. FRA ANGELICO. By G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D. G. F. WATTS, R.A. By C. T. BATEMAN. WATTEAU. By EDGCUMBE STALEY, B.A. GEORGE ROMNEY. By ROWLEY CLEEVE. HOLMAN HUNT. By G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D. HOLBEIN. By ARTHUR B. CHAMBERLAIN.

PREPARING:

REYNOLDS. By ROWLEY CLEEVE. LEIGHTON. By G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D. SIR L. ALMA-TADEMA. By H. ZIMMERN. GAINSBOROUGH. By Mrs. A. G. BELL. J. F. MILLET. By ARTHUR TOMSON. SIR J. E. MILLAIS, P.R.A. By A. LYS BALDRY.

OTHERS TO FOLLOW.

LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

Bell’s Miniature Series of Painters

HANS HOLBEIN

BY

ARTHUR B. CHAMBERLAIN

DEPUTY KEEPER OF THE BIRMINGHAM ART GALLERY

LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1902

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

LIFE OF HANS HOLBEIN 1

EARLY DAYS IN AUGSBURG AND BASLE 1

FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND 9

RETURN TO BASLE 13

SECOND RESIDENCE IN ENGLAND 15

THE ART OF HOLBEIN 23

LARGE DECORATIVE WORKS AND WALL-PAINTINGS 25

RELIGIOUS PAINTINGS 29

BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS AND ORNAMENTAL WOODCUTS 32

DESIGNS FOR GOLDSMITHS AND OTHER CRAFTSMEN 34

PORTRAIT PAINTING 36

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 44

LIST OF THE ARTIST’S CHIEF WORKS 61

CHRONOLOGY OF THE ARTIST’S LIFE 69

CHIEF BOOKS ON HOLBEIN 71

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS OF MILAN _Collection of the Duke of Norfolk, now lent to the National Gallery_ _Frontispiece_

THE MEYER MADONNA _Darmstadt_ 32

THE AMBASSADORS _National Gallery_ 46

PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS _Collection of the Earl of Radnor, Longford Castle_ 50

PORTRAIT OF GEORG GISZE _Berlin Gallery_ 52

PORTRAIT OF ROBERT CHESEMAN _The Hague Gallery_ 56

MARY MAGDALEN AT THE SEPULCHRE _Hampton Court_ 58

DRAWING OF SIR THOMAS MORE _Windsor Castle_ 60

LIFE OF HANS HOLBEIN

EARLY DAYS IN AUGSBURG AND BASLE.

Hans Holbein was born, in 1497, at Augsburg, in Swabia, Southern Germany, to which town 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 the leading painters of Augsburg, and an artist of importance in the history of German art.

The elder Holbein was one of the first of German painters strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance, and a chronological study of his 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 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 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.

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 published 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.

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. 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.

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 fame of Hertenstein’s painted house had spread to Basle, and Holbein was soon busy over similar undertakings in the town of his adoption, of which the most celebrated was _The House of the Dance_. He also produced many designs for stained-glass windows, as well as a number of sketches for costumes and patterns for goldsmiths and metal-workers. His most important commission at this time, however, was the decoration of the interior of the new Town Hall with wall-paintings, showing that, although only twenty-four, he was already considered to be the chief artist in Basle. He began this work in June, 1521, and by November, 1522, had covered three of the walls with subjects taken from ancient history. These were probably selected for him, and were intended as examples of that exercise of stern justice which should characterize the actions and decisions of all rulers. These great decorative paintings have long since perished through damp and neglect, and only a few fragments remain in the Basle Museum. When he had finished three of the walls, he was of opinion that he had earned the full amount voted by the Town Council for the completion of the whole chamber. The Council saw the justice of this, but, cautious of their expenditure of the public funds, like many Councils of the present day, they resolved to “let the back wall alone until further notice.”

In spite of these large decorative undertakings, Holbein found time to paint a number of sacred pictures, among the earlier ones being a _Passion_ series, coarsely and hastily painted on canvas; a _Last Supper_, reminding one of more famous examples by Leonardo and Luini; and others which are described later on (_see p. 29_). His two greatest sacred pictures, which are worthy to stand by the side of the finest canvases of the Italians, are the _Madonna and Saints_, at Solothurn, painted in 1522, and the famous _Meyer Madonna_, at Darmstadt, (_see illustration, and p. 44_). The latter was executed about 1526 for the former burgomaster, Jacob Meyer.

Among other works of this period of the artist’s career are two small portraits (Basle Museum), representing a certain Dorothea Offenburg, a lady of no great repute in her day, as _Venus with Cupid_, and again as _Lais Corinthiaca_. These are two of the pictures to which certain critics point as showing so strongly the influence of the Milanese school as to suggest a personal visit to Italy.

Holbein’s fame as an illustrator largely depends upon his celebrated _Dance of Death_ woodcuts, and his illustrations to the New Testament. Both series were commissioned by the brothers Trechsel, printers, of Lyons, about 1523, the designs from the pen of Holbein, and the blocks cut by Hans Lützelburger, the one engraver of the period who was fitted to reproduce Holbein’s work in its full delicacy and beauty. Both artist and woodcutter seem to have been occupied with the commission until 1526, in which year Lützelburger died, and although Holbein had completed his part, the work stopped short for want of a competent engraver. Neither series was published until 1538, when Holbein was at his zenith as a portrait painter in England. _The Dance of Death_ has been popularized by many reprints and reproductions; indeed, these satires on the uncertainty of life, homilies in miniature, drawn with the most surprising power and artistic beauty within the smallest limits, soon became famous throughout Europe.

FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND.

The Reformation in Switzerland, with the violent passions it aroused, made painting a precarious means of livelihood. Theological disputes agitated Basle from end to end, and the lower classes of the community were given over to disorder and discontent. Disturbances were of continual occurrence, culminating in the so-called Peasants’ War. Privilege after privilege was wrested from the nobility and the great churchmen, and very many of the pictures, images, and decorations in the churches were wrecked by the fury of the mob in the fight for religious freedom. 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. Holbein had painted his portrait more than once. One of the finest of them, sent by the learned humanist to Sir Thomas More, was probably the one now in Longford Castle (_see illustration, and p. 50_), dated 1523. A second example is the fine profile now in the Louvre. Erasmus wrote to Sir Thomas More about the artist, and More, in his reply, promised to do what he could for him when he came.

Holbein left Basle towards the end of August, 1526, and journeyed to England by way of Antwerp, where in all probability he made a short stay, reaching London about November. He was received with much kindness by Sir Thomas More, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and holding other high offices; and, according to tradition, remained as More’s guest at his country house at Chelsea during the whole time of his first English visit. He seems to have confined his practice as a portrait painter entirely to Sir Thomas More’s family and his immediate circle of friends, which was a large and learned one, embracing many of the leading churchmen, statesmen, and scholars of the day. More does not appear to have made him known to the King, although it is probable that Henry, who frequently visited the Speaker at Chelsea, and was a great patron of the fine arts, must have become acquainted, even as early as this, with Holbein’s work.

In 1527 he painted Sir Thomas’s portrait, the picture now in the possession of Mr. Edward Huth. In the same year he painted _William Wareham_, Archbishop of Canterbury. Two examples of this portrait exist, both by Holbein, at Lambeth Palace and in the Louvre, and two fine drawings, in the British Museum and at Windsor. Other portraits of 1527 are those of _Sir Henry Guildford_, the Lord Chamberlain (Windsor); his wife, _Lady Guildford_ (Mr. Frewen’s collection); _Sir Brian Tuke_ (Munich and the Duke of Westminster); _John Fisher_, Bishop of Rochester, whose finished portrait is lost, but for which two fine sketches still exist (Windsor and the British Museum); and several undated works, such as the portrait of _Sir Henry Wyatt_ (Louvre), were probably painted in this year. In 1528 he produced the fine portrait of _Nicholas Kratzer_, the King’s Astronomer (Louvre), and _Thomas and John Godsalve_, of Norwich, on one panel (Dresden).

The most important work which he undertook at this time has, unfortunately, disappeared. This was the large portrait group of _Sir Thomas More and His Family_. Several versions of it still exist, of which the one at Nostell Priory is the most important, but not one of them is a genuine work of Holbein’s. Happily, the very beautiful sketch for the whole composition is to-day one of the chief treasures of the Basle Museum. It was taken to Switzerland by the artist as a present from Sir Thomas to Erasmus. Several fine studies for the heads of the sitters have also been preserved (Windsor collection).

Mention must be made of another important undertaking with which there is good reason to believe that Holbein had much to do. Early in 1527 French Ambassadors were in London negotiating for an alliance between England and France. The signing of this treaty was celebrated at Greenwich on May 5, with much ceremonious festivity, concluding with a supper in a specially built banqueting-house. One of the chief painters engaged in the internal decoration of this building was a certain “Master Hans,” a title by which Holbein was well known; and, common as this Christian name was in Germany, no trace has ever yet been found of any other artist named Hans then working in England except Holbein. The official direction of the building and decorating of this temporary hall was in the hands of Sir Henry Guildford, and it would be natural for him to turn to the craftsman of whose artistic powers he had full knowledge. It was the kind of work, too, for which Holbein was already celebrated in Switzerland. He appears to have been appointed to supervise the numerous painters employed, and frequent mention is made of “Master Hans and his company” (Calendar of State Papers, 1526-1528). By March 2 “Master Hans” had left Greenwich, and was busily engaged in London upon a large “plat,” or picture, of _The Battle of Spurs_. He had finished this in a month, and was paid £4 10s. for it. This picture was fixed on the back of an arch which divided the banqueting-hall from the gallery leading to the ball-room. Considering the occasion for which it was painted, the subject was rather a cruel one, representing as it did the putting to rout of a large body of mounted Frenchmen by a handful of English cavalry; but it greatly tickled King Henry’s fancy, and he made a point of drawing the attention of the Ambassadors to it. This picture has disappeared.

RETURN TO BASLE.

Holbein was back in Basle in the summer of 1528. Possibly he was recalled by the Town Council, under penalty of losing his rights of citizenship if he disobeyed. On August 29 he purchased for 300 florins a house overlooking the Rhine, and on March 30, 1531, he also bought the adjoining house for 70 florins, thus proving that his English visit had been far from fruitless. He remained in Basle for four years, but the only important work upon which he was engaged was the completion of his Town Hall decorations. The Town Council requested him to finish the “back wall,” and he covered it with two fine compositions, _The Meeting of Samuel and Saul_, and _Rehoboam_, the preliminary sketches for which are now in the Basle Museum. He was engaged upon this work during the latter half of 1530.