Hans Holbein
The favourite painter of Henry VIII was a wonder in his time and gave us a time capsule to the 16th century
There’s more to Henry VIII’S portrait artist than you know
Even if you don’t know much about Hans Holbein the Younger, the 16th century German artist who spent the second half of his career as Henry VIII’S court painter, you are likely to know his portraits of the king. That imposing figure of the monarch: his legs spread wide, his shoulders broadened by the huge fur collar he wears, his hands resting on his hip and dagger, and his gaze trained directly on the viewer. It’s an image of supreme power that has defined Henry for the last 500 years and has graced the cover of just about every book about the Tudor period, from the Ladybird books of yesteryear to the most recent biographies of England’s endlessly fascinating king.
However, Holbein was far more than the king’s portraitist. One of the finest painters in the history of art, his reputation was built on his ability to draw and paint people with such convincing verisimilitude that it was as if they were almost alive. In today’s post-photographic era the experience of seeing a carbon copy of someone seems less impressive, but in the 16th century this was considered a wonder.
His portraits would have been seen as exceptional novelties with a mesmerising effect. But portraiture was by no means Holbein’s sole output. Before he came to England in 1526 he had secured a reputation as a master of devotional religious works, largescale mural painting and much more.
Few documentary records regarding Holbein’s life exist, but there is some evidence that he was a recognised child prodigy. He was born in 1497 in Augsburg, Germany, the son of esteemed painter Hans Holbein the Elder, much of whose work hangs today in that city’s museum of art, the Staatsgalerie. In two religious works, painted in 1502 and 1504 respectively, the older Holbein smuggled a portrait of his young son Hans into the narrative. In both, the composition draws particular attention to the juvenile Holbein and this may well suggest that Hans Holbein the Younger was celebrated as a local wonder from an early age.
Certainly by the time he was in his late teens Holbein had moved to Basel in Switzerland and had embarked on a celebrated career. It was here in 1521 that he created one of the most astonishing devotional images ever painted: Dead Christ in the Tomb.
Christ is painted full-size, dead and emaciated, flat on his back in an open catacomb similar to those used in ancient Rome. The lime-wood Holbein has painted on has been cut into a shallow rectangle, the same length and height of the
imagined space containing the Messiah. Christ’s body is viewed side on, his rib cage just centimetres from the roof of his grave. His head lolls to one side to reveal a gaping hollow mouth. His eyes, partially open, are unseeing.
In his painting of Christ Holbein takes verisimilitude in religious art to a new level. The full-size figure is just the first indicator that the artist intends this work to be as convincing as possible, an illusion that could, for an instant, be taken for the real thing.
The legend is that to best give a sense of Christ postmortem Holbein drew from a corpse he found in the Rhine. Christ’s hair is painted with astonishing detail, individual strands clearly visible. This minute observation is continued around the eyes, where each single eyelash is noted. The parted lips are desiccated and swollen, the gums and teeth exposed. There is bruising on the side of the face. The anatomy and musculature of the body are persuasive. Here are the thin remnants of a man who has been starved during crucifixion, the sinews and muscles perished, his ribs visible, the skin suffering from that strange sagging that death brings when blood stops pumping.
Painting of such virtuoso realism was an exhilarating rarity at this time, and the impact of Dead Christ would have been considerable. Not least because Holbein also added perspectival trompe l’oeil to give the illusion that parts of Christ’s body were overhanging the catacomb. Christ’s right hand marks the niche’s boundary, his bent fourth and fifth fingers protruding beyond it. The heel of Christ’s right foot lies on the very edge of the recess, the foot and toes therefore also extending beyond the cavity in which the body is held. In this way Holbein is placing Christ and the viewer of the painting in the same spatial dimension, and suggests that Christ is present in the here and now. As such he becomes a ‘memento mori’ reminding the viewer of his or her own inevitable death as well as Christ’s actual suffering.
With one final flourish of genius, Holbein goes further. The original title of the painting, Iesus Nazarus rex J(udaeorum), is still inscribed on the frame, and is a device used to compress time. For as he or she reads this title, the viewer is taken back to biblical Palestine where Jesus was mockingly crowned ‘King of the Jews’ and Christianity was yet to be born. In time-shifting the viewer into the past, he or she becomes a witness to Jesus’ entombment, a character in a story that will ultimately lead to Christ’s Resurrection.
Paintings such as this should have secured Holbein’s career in Germany for the rest of his life. However, the Reformation put paid to that. What began with Lutheranism in 1517 and would ultimately become known as Protestantism led to a wave of iconoclasm across Northern Europe in which religious work, made under the auspices of the Catholic Church, was destroyed. Painters, no matter how talented, found their livelihoods severely compromised. Although Holbein was not solely reliant on religious commissions, the more ascetic Protestant regime affected his other work too. He had become famous for huge trompe l’oeil murals for the homes of wealthy merchants; for providing lavish illustration for books; for ornate decoration of weaponry and jewellery; and, of course, for making magnificent portraits. By 1526 much of this was considered far too indulgent for the newly Protestant residents of Basel, so Holbein sought a new career in what was at this time a Catholic England where
“The Ambassadors… is a map that, decoded, tells you all you need to know about its subjects, their status and the political climate in which they lived”
Protestantism was kept at bay and where the appetite for portraiture was strong.
Holbein arrived in London with letters of introduction to Sir Thomas More, one of Henry’s senior statesmen. Immediately absorbed into More’s household, it was just a matter of weeks before he was working for the court. Despite a brief return to Basel between 1528 and 1532, London became the painter’s home for the rest of his life and the place where he made his most famous work. His portraits of Sir Thomas More and Sir Thomas Cromwell have become the defining images of these powerful men and, as they hang opposite one another today in The Frick Collection in New York, their bitter rivalry. Meanwhile Holbein’s portraits of Henry VIII, and his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, allow us an uncanny sense of intimacy with long-dead royalty.
However it is The Ambassadors, Holbein’s strange portrait of two French diplomats, that is arguably his most compelling work. As famous for its oddity as for its genius, the huge picture features Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve standing at either end of a buffet, on which lie a number of astronomical and astrological items, as well as a lute, a globe and books. There is something awkward about the composition, as if the men have also been ‘arranged’ around these objects, their direct gaze challenging the onlooker to decipher what this strange painting might possibly mean. Also peculiar is the fact that these two men are together in the first place, in the kind of double portrait normally reserved for a man and his wife. And then of course there is the weird thing that hovers between them. What looks like a baguette slants across the panel in a totally different plane of vision, floating in an imaginary space between the ambassadors and the onlooker. Here is another memento mori, but one that is only understood when one views the painting from the extreme right, at which point the ovoid brown object transforms through anamorphic perspective to reveal itself as a human skull.
The Ambassadors was intended as a conceit, one that demanded an unusual level of involvement from the viewer. This was more than a portrait per se, it was a discussion point, a debate, or a game that de Dinteville, for whom the painting was made, could initiate when introducing people to the work. In the painting Holbein offers a constellation of references that identify and contextualize his subjects. His painting is in effect a map that, properly decoded, tells you all you need to know about de Dinteville at the moment his likeness was made, his status and the political climate in which he lived.
De Dinteville is on the left, magnificent in a slashed pink satin doublet and sleeves over which he wears a tunic of black velvet, and a silk coat lined with lynx fur. Around his neck is the Order of St Michael, awarded him in 1531. On his cap he sports a fashionable badge bearing the image of a skull – another reminder of human mortality. Contemporaries may well have recognised this outfit as that worn by him to Anne Boleyn’s coronation in 1533 in which he played a major role, not only forming part of the
“He created one of the most astonishing devotional images ever painted: Dead Christ in the Tomb”
coronation parade but commissioning the guard of honour of a dozen French men that led it. In his right hand is an ornate dagger, ‘engraved’ with his age: AET SUAE 29. This reinforces the portrait’s date as 1533, since this was de Dinteville’s age in this year, when he was the French ambassador in London.
De Dinteville was the Seigneur of Polisy, and his hometown is marked on the globe on the lower shelf of the buffet. There is word play in the misspelling of the place name as ‘Policy’ – after all what do ambassadors do all day if not deal with just that? The cities of Paris and Lyon are also noted, cities where de Dinteville would have regularly attended the French court.
The globe has been customised by Holbein to emphasise certain characteristics of the world in 1533. Nuremberg is singled out, the intellectual heart of liberal Germany; then Lyon, its French equivalent. The religious divisions of the world are also alluded to in these centres, since both had significant associations with Lutheransim. Meanwhile Rome marks the centre of Catholicism and Jerusalem that of Islamic puissance. Red lines crossing the globe represent the territorial division of the Americas between Spain and Portugal. The international political and religious conflicts of the time are suggested by a book on arithmetic featured just below the globe, held open by a set square at a page dedicated to division.
The role of the ambassador is, of course, to negotiate to achieve resolution and harmony on the world stage.
The reference to diplomatic endeavour is continued by Holbein’s depiction of a lute with a broken string on the lower shelf of the buffet. In popular literature of the time this had become an established emblem for diplomacy. Just as a lute with a broken string cannot achieve proper harmony, in political negotiations a pact can be ruined by just one party failing to agree. However, the lute was also a symbol of accord and heavenly harmony, and so here it not only suggests discord but also the balm to soothe it.
As to de Selve, he is shown standing on the right, clad in a floor-length fur-lined damask coat. His age is inscribed on the closed pages of a book on which he leans – he is 25. He serves as a supplementary coordinate to locate the date of the portrait. De Selve was only in England for a few weeks in the spring of 1533, when he joined de Dinteville in sensitive diplomatic negotiations to secure French support for the controversial Boleyn marriage, so the painting reflects this moment. There are more allusions to Henry VIII’S second marriage: on the top shelf of the buffet a cylindrical sundial is set to 11 April 11 1533, the date that Henry VIII announced his marriage to Boleyn to his court.
Meanwhile the beautiful floor on which the ambassadors stand is based on the ‘Cosmati’ pavement in Westminster Abbey, on which Boleyn stood to be crowned Queen. The ambassadors’ arrangement in the painting, standing as if husband and wife, now makes sense as yet another reference to Henry’s marriage to his second queen.
Might Boleyn have commissioned the painting in gratitude to de Dinteville for his crucial role in endorsing her marriage on the international stage? This remains a strong possibility. But above all the painting is a reminder that Holbein’s work, carefully observed, remains a portal to understanding past worlds.
The anamorphic skull that is so very prominent in The Ambassadors is also a reminder of just how perilous life was in 16th century Europe. War, famine and above all plague were facts of life that not even the most skilled politician could negotiate. Holbein himself fell prey to a bout of plague that descended on London in 1543 and cut short a career that promised so much more.
“Holbein fell prey to a bout of plague in 1543, cutting short a career that promised so much more”