The Ambassadors (1533)
National Gallery, London
Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, with a distorted anamorphic skull across the floor
Image: Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Hans Holbein the Younger
c. 1497–1543 · German (worked in Switzerland and England)
Northern Renaissance
Hans Holbein the Younger was a German painter and printmaker, born in Augsburg, who worked in Basel and then England, where he became King's Painter to Henry VIII. One of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century, he fixed the image of the Tudor court, from Henry himself to Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.
How to spot them
- ▸Crisp, precise portraits with every texture of fur, velvet and jewellery rendered; sitters often against flat blue or green backgrounds
- ▸Tudor sitters — Henry VIII in a wide-shouldered, legs-apart pose; More, Cromwell, Anne of Cleves
- ▸Quiz clue: 'anamorphic skull', 'King's Painter', 'Basel', 'Erasmus', 'Dance of Death', 'Augsburg'
Key works
Portrait of Henry VIII (Whitehall Mural) (1536–1537)
Lost (Whitehall Palace, destroyed by fire 1698); known through copies
Created the iconic swaggering image of Henry; a surviving cartoon fragment is in the National Portrait Gallery
Image: Remigius van Leemput / After Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527)
Frick Collection, New York
More wears his SS chain of office; Holbein came to London with an introduction from Erasmus
Image: Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1520–1522)
Kunstmuseum Basel
Life-size, brutally realistic corpse; Dostoevsky wrote that it could make a man lose his faith
Image: Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of Christina of Denmark (1538)
National Gallery, London
Full-length portrait of the widowed Duchess of Milan, painted as Henry VIII sought a new wife
Image: Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of Thomas Cromwell (c. 1532–1534)
Frick Collection, New York
Hangs in the Frick facing his enemy Thomas More
Image: Hans Holbein the Younger · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •He was the son of the painter Hans Holbein the Elder, hence 'the Younger'
- •He made his name in Basel, painting portraits of the humanist Erasmus and designing woodcuts including the Dance of Death
- •In The Ambassadors, the skull is only seen correctly from a sharp angle to the side of the picture
- •His flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves (1539, Louvre) helped persuade Henry VIII into a marriage that quickly failed
- •Christina of Denmark reportedly said that if she had two heads, one would be at the King of England's disposal
- •He died in London in 1543, possibly of plague
- •The Ambassadors was painted in 1533, the year Elizabeth I was born
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Sources
- National Gallery, London — The Ambassadors
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Hans Holbein the Younger