Holbein
German family of artists. Hans Holbein, who became one of the leading
painters in south Germany, was the son of Michael Holbein, a tanner, who
may have settled in Augsburg from Basle, and of Anna Mair, through whom
he was related to important artists working in and near Augsburg. These
included his uncles Hans Mair (probably identical with the painter Mair
von Landshut) and Michel Erhart, and his cousins Gregor Erhart, Paulus
Erhart and Hans Daucher, all of whom were sculptors. Apparently included
in Hans Holbein’s workshop was his brother Sigmund Holbein (d
Berne, 1540), whom Hans portrayed in a drawing (1512; London, BM). In
1501 they were together at Frankfurt am Main and in 1516–17 Sigmund took
proceedings against his brother, who had already left Augsburg. No
documented work by Sigmund Holbein survives. Hans Holbein married c.
1494, but the identity of his wife is unknown; their two sons, Ambrosius
Holbein and Hans Holbein, also became artists, the latter being among
the most important portrait painters in northern Europe during the
Reformation.
Hans Holbein the Elder
(b Augsburg, ?1460–65; d 1534). Painter and draughtsman.
The date of his birth has been estimated from his earliest signed
painting, the
Death of the Virgin (Budapest, Mus. F.A.), which is
dated 148(?). His earliest surviving dated altarpiece is the St Afra
Altarpiece, produced for the church of SS Ulrich and Afra, Augsburg
(1490; Eichstätt, Bischof. Pal.; Basle, Kstmus.). In 1493 he was
recorded, buying a house in Augsburg, as ‘Hans Holbein the painter,
citizen of Ulm’; he was then working in Ulm with the sculptor Michel
Erhart on the Weingartner Altarpiece, depicting scenes from the Life
of the Virgin, for the chapel of the Virgin in the Benedictine
monastery at Weingarten (1493; panels, Augsburg Cathedral; carvings
untraced); here the style of the paintings reveals the influence of the
Netherlandish style of Rogier van der Weyden. By this date, however,
Holbein had already developed stylistic traits of his own: the ability
to depict individual facial characteristics, the clear and symmetrical
organization of his figures within the available space (here placing
them within various architectural structures, which serve both to
delineate the subsidiary scenes and to unify the separate panels of the
altarpiece) and the use of warm, glowing colour.
