Holbein, HANS, the younger, one of the most celebrated of painters, was born at Augsburg in 1494 or (more likely) 1495, the son of Hans Holbein the elder (c. 1460-1524), also a painter, and known by such works as 'The Basilica of St Paul,' now in the Augsburg Gallery. He was instructed in art by his father, and his earlier efforts were influenced by the works of Hans Burgkmair, who, according to such authorities as Stetten, was his maternal uncle. The first paintings that can with certainty be attributed to Holbein's hand are two panels of an altarpiece in the above-named collection. Various Madonna pictures which bear traces of the influence of the school of Memling, and a votive work in memory of Burgomaster Ulrich Schwartz, were painted in the immediately following years; but the finest of the artist's productions executed in Augsburg was the altarpiece for the monastery of St Catharine (1515-16), now in the Pinakothek, Munich, Renaissance architectural ornamentation of great beauty being skilfully introduced.
About 1516 Holbein was at work in Basel, but he does not appear to have settled there till 1520, when he received the freedom of the city, and became a member of the guild Zum Himmel, which his elder brother Ambrosius, also a painter, had joined three years previously. During the interval he was painting in Zurich, and in Lucerne—where he decorated the interior and exterior of the residence of the mayor, Jacob von Hertenstein, with paintings now only known through drawings which were executed before the building was destroyed in 1824. It is possible that he also during this period made a brief visit to Milan; and the influence of the masters of northern Italy, especially of Mantegna and Leonardo da Vinci, can be traced in his subsequent productions. Among the more important works executed at Basel are the powerful portraits of the Burgomaster Jacob Meier and his wife; while the religious subjects of the period include eight scenes of the Passion, painted upon a panel, ranked very highly by Woltmann, though Rumohr and Wornum are unable to regard them as Holbein's work, and the doors of the organ of Basel Cathedral, painted, upon canvas, with stately figures of saints and bishops. All these works are now in the Basel Museum. To 1522 is due one of the most important of the master's religious pictures, the Madonna and Child with St Ursus and St Martin of Tours (or perhaps St Nicholas), painted for the church of Reuchen, near Solothurn; and to about the same date is assigned the great work commissioned by that Jacob Meier whom Holbein had already painted, and representing the merchant with his wife and family kneeling before the Virgin and Child. The picture exists in two slightly-varying versions at Darmstadt and at Dresden, of which the former is the finer, and is now generally admitted to be the original. His mural decorations of 'The Peasants' Dance' and various classical subjects on the façades of a house in the Eisengasse, and those in the town-hall, are now known only through sketches and a few surviving fragments. He also executed noble portraits of Bonifacius Amerbach, professor at Basel, in the museum there; of Frobenius, the printer; and two distinct portraits of Erasmus and one of Melanchthon. Another interesting memorial of the intercourse between Erasmus and Holbein is a copy of the 'Praise of Folly,' published by Frobenius in 1514, in which the margins are enriched by a series of vigorous and humorous pen-sketches by Holbein. It is now in the Basel Museum.
During his residence at Basel Holbein was largely employed upon designs for the wood-engravers, probably indeed it was mainly with a view to such work that he settled there. In addition to about twenty alphabets of richly ornamental letters, he designed over 300 woodcuts, including printers' devices, title-borders, and such general illustrations as those to Adam Petri's editions of Luther's New Testament (1522 and 1523), to Thomas Wolff's issue of the same work (1523), and to Petri's edition of Luther's Old Testament (1523); as also the large single woodcuts of 'Christ bearing the
Cross' and 'The Resurrection,' and the two scarce subjects of 'The Sale of Indulgences' and 'The True Light,' which, like some other of his works, show the artist's warm sympathy with the Reformation. His most important woodcuts, however—the noble series of 'The Dance of Death' and the 'Old Testament Cuts'—though probably executed at this time, were not issued till a later period, the first editions of both being published at Lyons in 1538. It was formerly believed that Holbein was engraver as well as designer of the woodcuts associated with his name, but it is now generally conceded that he only designed and drew them.
In the end of 1526 or the beginning of 1527 Holbein visited England, when he was introduced by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, then in high favour with Henry VIII. He now began his great series of portraits of the most eminent Englishmen of his time, the studies for many of which exist in the cabinet of eighty-seven masterly drawings by his hand in the royal collection at Windsor. In various ways these drawings throw valuable light upon his methods of work; the fact, for instance, that many of them bear written notes of the colours of their details proves that he was accustomed to execute his finished oil portraits from such charcoal and chalk sketches as these, and not directly from the life. Excellent autotype reproductions of these drawings have been issued by the South Kensington Department. Among the most notable of his oil portraits executed in England are 'Archbishop Warham,' of which versions exist at Lambeth Palace, in the Louvre, and in the possession of Viscount Dillon; 'Sir Henry Guildford,' in the royal collection at Windsor; 'Nicholas Kratzer,' the king's astronomer, in the Louvre; and 'The Family of Sir Thomas More,' now lost, but known through various copies and through the original sketch, now in the Basel Museum.
On his return to Basel (1529) Holbein painted the group of his wife and two children now in the museum there; and in the following year again took up his work in the council-hall, executing powerful mural subjects of 'Rehoboam,' 'Samuel and Saul,' and 'Hezekiah,' works now destroyed. Probably in the beginning of 1532 he again visited London, whence a pressing invitation from the Basel council was ineffectual to withdraw him. At first he was much employed in London by the German merchants of the Hanseatic League, many of whose portraits he executed. Sketches still remain for the decorations which he designed for these traders of the steelyard on the occasion of the marriage of the king to Anne Boleyn; which, with 'The Triumphs of Riches and of Poverty,' were almost the only symbolical subjects executed at this period, to which are also due the great portrait group at Longford Castle known as 'The Ambassadors,' probably representing Sir Thomas Wyatt and John Leyland, the portraits of Thomas Cromwell, and the exquisite circular miniatures of Henry and Charles Brandon, sons of the Duke of Suffolk, in the royal collection at Windsor. He also executed many masterly designs for metal-work, and such drawings for the wood-engravers as the title-pages of Coverdale's translation of the Bible (1535) and of Hall's Chronicles (1548). From a letter from the poet Bourdon to Solimar, dated 1536, we learn that Holbein at that time held the appointment of royal painter to Henry VIII.; and in this capacity he executed at Whitehall Palace a mural painting of the monarch and Queen Jane Seymour, with Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, destroyed in the fire of 1698, of which a copy by Van Leemput exists at Hampton Court, while a portion of the original cartoon is at Hardwick Hall. This latter work and the large-sized miniature in the possession of Earl Spencer are regarded by Woltmann as the only surviving authentic portraits of the king from Holbein's hand among the many bearing his name. His delicate and exquisite portrait of Queen Jane Seymour is in the Belvedere, Vienna. To the same period is referable the admirable half-length of Sir Nicholas Carew, Master of the King's Horse, at Dalkeith Palace, and the noble portrait of Hubert Morett, the jeweller, formerly attributed to Leonardo, in the Dresden Gallery.
Holbein was repeatedly employed abroad on the king's service. In 1538 he was despatched to the court of the Netherlands to paint a likeness of Christina of Denmark, who had been proposed as a successor to Jane Seymour as queen to Henry VIII. In a three-hours' sitting he executed a sketch 'very perfflight;' and from this he produced the noble full-length in the possession of the Duke of Norfolk. This work is one of the painter's choicest masterpieces, most attractive in the quietude of its execution and in its rendering of feminine sweetness and innocence. In the same year he appears to have been in Burgundy upon the king's business; and in July 1539 he was despatched to the court of Cleves, where he painted Anne of Cleves—'expressed her image verye lyvely'—in a work now in the Louvre; while about 1540 he executed the striking portrait of the Duke of Norfolk, uncle of Queen Catharine Howard, of which the original is at Windsor, and an old copy is preserved at Arundel Castle. The last work upon which Holbein was engaged was the picture of 'Henry VIII. granting a Charter to the Masters of the Barber-Surgeons Company,' still preserved in their guildhall. It was left incomplete at the time of his death by the plague, which, as the discovery of his will by Mr Black in 1861 has proved, occurred in London between 7th October and 29th November 1543, eleven years earlier than was previously believed.
Holbein is seen at his highest in his portraiture; and in this department his expressional power, his veracity and dignity, and his noble technical qualities of unerring draughtmanship, subtle and perfect modelling, and richness and force of colouring entitle him to rank with the greatest masters. It is his power as a portraitist that gives value and impressiveness to his religious subjects. He has little of the imaginative force, the visionary power, which stamps the works of an artist like Dürer; but his foot treads very firmly upon the earth, and the faces and forms which he bestows upon his sacred personages are full of homely truth, and a simple, moving pathos. As an ornamentalist he ranks as the equal of the greatest Italian masters, his work of this class being distinguished by easy seizure of form, great nobility of design, and the most exuberant richness of fancy.
Many works by Holbein were included in the South Kensington Portrait Exhibition of 1866, in the Royal Academy Old Masters' Exhibition of 1880, and in the Tudor Exhibition of 1890; but in all of these exhibitions many portraits were quite erroneously attributed to his brush.
See Holbein und seine Zeit: des Künstlers Familie, Leben, und Schaffen, by Alfred Woltmann (2d ed. Leip. 1874-76; English trans. of the first edition, by F. E. Bunnét, Lond. 1872); and Some Account of the Life and Works of Hans Holbein, by R. N. Wornum (Lond. 1867).