This far-reaching study is the first comprehensive volume on Hans Holbein in 40 years. It is filled with color reproductions of the Renaissance artist's magnetic portraits, such as the well-loved rendering of the baby Edward, Prince of Wales, wielding his gold rattle like a scepter. Art historians will find the scholarship deep and subtle; all readers will enjoy stories such as the tale about Anne of Cleves, one of Henry VIII's prospective brides. Holbein enhanced her plain looks with regal robes of gold-encrusted velvet. The portrait persuaded Henry to propose; when Anne arrived, though, he called her a "fat Flanders mare." Holbein's reception at court turned chilly as a result: sic transit gloria pictoris.


Review
Hans Holbein is a stimulating book with many new insights and suggestions.


Book Description
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543), one of the most versatile and admired painters of the Northern Renaissance, trained under his father in Augsburg and then worked for leading patrons in Switzerland before settling in England as Court Painter to Henry VIII. To commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of the artist's birth, Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener offer this richly illustrated book--the first comprehensive monograph on the artist to appear in more than forty years--which is a major advance in our understanding of Holbein's contribution to European art. The authors reexamine every aspect of a remarkable career, and further illuminate the artistic and cultural influences that affected the artist. Holbein was a hugely ambitious artist, and even during his formative years in Lucerne and Basel, made designs for jewelry, stained glass, and woodcuts, and painted major altarpieces and portraits. He also carried out several monumental decorative schemes for private houses and civic buildings. In his commissions, Holbein sought to rival the greatest masters of Germany and Italy, most notably Dürer and Mantegna, and by the time of his visit to France in 1524 he was determined to secure a position as Court Painter. However, Holbein soon found himself in a precarious situation as a result of the Reformation's increasing hostility toward religious works, and he left for England in 1532. While in England, in addition to decorative schemes and Triumphs, he both drew and painted numerous unrivaled likenesses of leading courtiers, merchants, and diplomats, among which is his celebrated double portrait, The Ambassadors. This book offers both a remarkable range of extant visual evidence and a rewarding and scholarly account of Holbein's oeuvre in its full historical and artistic contexts.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German


Card catalog description
Holbein was a hugely ambitious artist, and even during his formative years in Lucerne and Basle undertook to make designs for jewelry, stained glass and woodcuts as well as to paint major altarpieces and portraits. He also carried out several monumental decorative schemes for private houses and civic buildings. This book offers both a remarkable range of extant visual evidence and a rewarding and scholarly account of Holbein's oeuvre in its full historical and artistic contexts. In addition, the authors include a reappraisal of the high reputation in which Holbein was held during the centuries following his death, as illustrated by the opinion expressed by the Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard and the searches undertaken by the French collector Charles Patin, and by the remarks and exertions of the wealthy eighteenth-century dilettante Horace Walpole.

FROM THE PUBLISHER