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HANS HOLBEIN

Hans Holbein was a German portrait and religious painter. He was born in 1497 at Augsburg and died in 1543 of the plague. He studied under his father, Hans Holbein the elder, a painter of considerable merit who lived between 1450 and 1526, and at an early age settled at Basel, where he exercised his art until about 1526. He then came to England, where letters from his friend Erasmus, whose Panegyric on Folly he had illustrated by a series of drawings, procured him the patronage of the chancellor Sir Thomas More.

He was appointed court painter by Henry VIII and in the Windsor collection has left portraits of all the eminent Englishmen of the time. The most celebrated of his pictures are the Madonna at Darmstadt, representing the Burgomaster Meyer and his wives kneeling to the Virgin; and the Solothurn Madonna. His famous Dance of Death has only been preserved in the engravings of Liltzelburger. There are a considerable number of engravings on wood and copper from Holbein's designs.
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