Oh MAN was I ever excited for this one!

 

I couldn’t resist going with Hans Holbein the Younger for this week. His engraving and woodcut pieces are enormous favorites of mine, particularly from his Danse Macabre series. In this series of engravings, Holbein creates satirical Christian reformist memento mori (“remember death”) depicting the figure of death coming to claim those from all walks of life, from Emperor to plowman and traveling merchant. Those engravings, particularly “L’empreux“, along with the work of Durer from the same era, are works of art that resonated with me and are very personal pieces. They’re responsible for me trying out drawing again after the last ten years and feverishly racing to draw enough material from November to April so that I could get into this program.

 

Engraving work aside, Hans was renowned as one of the finest portrait artists of his era, being dubbed “the Apelles of our time” by poet Nicholas Bourbon. His incredible precision can be seen in Portrait of the Merchant Georg Giese (1532), Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527), and Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette (1534). This earned him the position of King’s Painter at the court of Henry VIII, a title he would hold through much controversy later in his career due to the wild exaggerations of his patron, Thomas Cromwell, who arranged a marriage between the king and Anne of Cleves whom Holbein was commissioned to paint a portrait of. Though Holbein managed to avoid the the king’s fury, his patron was not so lucky, and was executed and publicly humiliated after being imprisoned in the Tower of London. Left without a primary patron once more, Holbein took on private commissions, painting additional portraits and designing a gorgeous clock-salt (a combination of salt cellar and table clock) for Sir Anthony Denny, which was later presented to the king. It’s currently the only remaining clock left in the collection of artifacts from Henry VIII’s reign. Holbein would succumb to infection shortly after, dying at age 45 amidst unsubstantiated rumours of plague. Where he lays buried remains a mystery.

 

Image credits:

linesandcolors.com/2006/04/23/hans-holbein-the-younger/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hans_Holbein_the_Younger_-_Charles_de_Solier,_Sieur_de_Morette_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre#/media/File:Holbein_Danse_Macabre_37.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Holbein_the_Younger#/media/File:Hans_Holbein_der_J%C3%BCngere_-_Der_Kaufmann_Georg_Gisze_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Holbein_the_Younger#/media/File:Hans_Holbein,_the_Younger_-_Sir_Thomas_More_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg