Artist and Courtier

John Haber
in New York City

Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein may not have been the first artist to identify with his sitters, but he made a point of it. Best known for The Ambassadors, his monumental portrait of two French luminaries in London, he was himself the ambassador for Renaissance painting in England.

At ease in the new humanism, he created more than one memorable image of Erasmus, the scholar and theologian, while still in his twenties. And the "prince among humanists" returned the favor, with personal recommendations to Sir Thomas More and others in his adopted home. At a time when an artist was supposed to serve his sitters, Holbein probably stayed with More during his first months there, with unquestioned access to privileged circles. He knew enough of the new learning to feature books and instruments, scientific and musical, in The Ambassadors, in flawless perspective and with the inviting glow of metal and wood. He knew enough of learning, too, to know that the printed word was its future. The first to portray a printer, he also collaborated on early examples of book art.

The go-to artist for wealthy merchants, courtiers, and the families of courtiers, he sought his place in the royal court as well. For him, "character" meant knowing one's place and knowing one's status. It meant a proper reserve and attention to detail, which became the hallmarks of his art. And it paid off, with the job of royal painter to Henry VIII. Now he has his first ever retrospective, showing off all those achievements. Sure enough, the Morgan Library calls it "Capturing Character."

A continental point of view

Born around 1497 in Augsburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Hans Holbein studied with his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, a skilled painter with a taste for elegant bodies and crowded narratives. The city, just northwest of Munich, had its aspirations as a center for banking, diplomacy, and the Reformation. It was advanced enough in art to look for models in Italy, and Holbein the Younger almost surely traveled there as well. A nude battle scene looks back to an engraving by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, the Florentine painter, in 1465. Scholars have recently attributed a not so heroic horseback rider, an allegory of passion from the 1530s, to Holbein himself. Like way too many upgrades, that may say more about careerism and the marketplace than the artist, but he was cosmopolitan nonetheless.

He was restless enough to look elsewhere as well. He softened his father's clumsy shadows and hardened his edges, giving faces a greater impact and bodies a greater weight. He moved to the Swiss Federation, where he left no doubt about his love for the Renaissance portrait and the new humanism. He was barely twenty when he painted the son of a printer and a future law professor in Basel. With Erasmus, he had his ticket to England, where he died in 1543, perhaps of the plague. For all his early success, he retreated briefly to Basel, but he tried again and it took.

He had his eye on the Northern Renaissance as well. He did not need the Medici family in Florence, a subject last year at the Met, to know that the late Renaissance did well by portrait painters and courtiers. Mannerism was all about looking back, and he led a revival of interest in Jan van Eyck. van Eyck would have taught him to aspire at once to atmosphere and precision. He had his own trick in drawings by adding flesh tones in light washes. The face seems at once of a piece with the white of the paper, eerily distinct, and thoroughly alive.

van Eyck gave him, too, a taste for iconography, or objects as symbols. A woman cradles a squirrel in her arms, because her family took a squirrel as an emblem, while a starling perches on her shoulder, because "starling" when spoken quickly sounds like her native town. Holbein added both at the last minute, perhaps at her urging, but he could not have needed much prodding. His taste for still life has its climax in The Ambassadors. Maybe the instruments were just there, but they say ever so much about the ambassadors all the same. They also speak of Holbein's command of the textures and surfaces of real things.

He looked to northern Europe as well for a new fashion in portraiture. Like Jan Gossart and Quentin Massys, he saw the potential of close-up heads in three-quarter view, in shallow spaces but with no hint of confinement. With Lucas Cranach, he saw the potential of circular frames—and the Morgan includes examples of all three artists (although, not to my mind, a still closer model for portraiture in Hans Memling). A green curtain for Gossaert has its counterpart as backdrop for Thomas More in a loan from the Frick from 1527. Their folds and ripples lend the sitter a greater energy and luxury. With Holbein, throw in a fur collar and rich red sleeves, and clothes truly have made the man.

Last, never forget the printed word. The Morgan plays to its strengths with an illuminated manuscript from its collection, but Holbein has moved far from such hand-painted landscapes and the medieval hunt. He collaborated with printers, adding illustrated borders to their text, and designed an entire alphabet for use as initial capital letters (or "drop caps"). He collaborated as well with Hans Lützelburger, a printmaker, rather than undertake woodcuts himself. They produced quite a Dance of Death, in which people from all walks of life go about their business, while a skeleton drops in as if for a chat, much as for Hollis Sigler to this day. But then a proper courtier knows when to uphold public morals and when to keep his moralizing to himself.

Precision and restraint

It takes a bit of a stretch to claim the first painter as near equal to his sitters. The change in stature was gradual, and the court painter to Henry VIII knew perfectly well when to keep his aspirations to himself. Besides, Holbein came after Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, and van Eyck, who included himself in a curved mirror as likely witness to a wedding. Still, he belongs to a new and more knowing century, and he created that mirror's greatest rival as an alternative to linear perspective. A skull at the feet of the ambassadors, like an imposing area rug, makes no sense head on but works just fine from a point of view to the painting's lower right. Then, too, Leonardo himself experimented with such anamorphic projection, although Holbein could never have known.

More telling is how he differed from all his models and his rivals. No one could match van Eyck's combination of detail and a unifying light, and Holbein did not even try. His interests lay elsewhere, in precision. His faces take their presence from the depth of their eye sockets, the hook of a nose, or the slim parting of their lips. A standard textbook spoke of his "unnatural naturalism"—not a bad definition of Mannerism at that. A dead Jesus from the artist's Basel years, set in the illusion of a narrow ledge, is spookiest of all.

He differed from his rivals in his sheer restraint. Sitters for Gossart and Metsys open onto a landscape or curtain in actual motion, which Holbein cannot allow. They also gesture, if only with fretful fingers. Holbein's scholars write, and women gesture humbly with open palms, but mostly they keep their hands together and to themselves. Apart from the green curtain, backgrounds run to greens and blues, flat but for an occasional flower. It brings them closer to the picture plane, while revealing nothing.

The flat background may include identifying text, to either side of a neck and shoulders. It further isolates a head, while delivering just the facts. It could almost be an illustrator's arrows pointing to what matters. At the same time, people are sympathetic and downright human, from a youthful beard with every wisp showing (not in a sketch, which has a fuller, older face, a mustache, and stubble) to an almost casual open collar. The squirrel may refer to a coat of arms, but the woman kept one as a pet. The son of Henry VIII has a rattle in the form of an orb, symbol of a king's realm, but it is still a toy.

Still, this is about character, never psychology. When a woman with her children seems close to tears, is she sad, trapped in her role as wife and mother? Maybe it is just an eye condition, or maybe she just is, and Holbein never comments on or condescends to his subjects. He does not take sides, whatever his feelings and however pressing the controversy. Close as he must have been to Sir Thomas More, he also paints Richard Southwell, a key figure in More's trial and execution. Southwell may look ruthless, but that is not a bug but a feature.

One might expect the Morgan to show Holbein through his prints and drawings. Instead, paintings give him his due. At the same time, it falls short of a full retrospective. Even in conjunction with the Getty Museum (which displayed a slightly different selection), it cannot include many of his best works—such as Henry's son, the dead Jesus, The Ambassadors, and other late full-length portraits. Rather, it excels in miniature, including medallions, enamel, and paintings that one could hold in one's hand. Just be aware that the artist keeps maximal ambitions under maximal restraint.

jhaber@haberarts.com

Hans Holbein the Younger ran at The Morgan Library through May 15, 2022.