Hans HolbeinChamberlain, Arthur B. (Arthur Bensley)
History
Hans Holbein
Chamberlain, Arthur B. (Arthur Bensley)
Holbein, Hans, 1497-1543
Sir Frederic Leighton, speaking of these two painters in his address to
the Royal Academy students in 1893, notes the most striking differences
between them in a few admirable sentences. He says of Holbein: “As a
draughtsman he displayed a flow, a fulness of form, and an almost
classic restraint which are wanting in the work of Dürer, and are,
indeed, not found elsewhere in German art. As a colourist he had a keen
sense of the values of tone relations, a sense in which Dürer again was
lacking; not so Teutonic in every way as the Nuremberg master, he formed
a link between the Italian and German races. A less powerful personality
than Dürer, he was a far superior painter. Proud may that country be
indeed that counts two names so great in art.”
It is an almost impossible task to sum up in a short paragraph the
leading characteristics of Holbein’s art. In his great decorative
wall-paintings he rivalled many of the best Italian painters of the
Renaissance. In the depth of expression in his portraits, and his power
of rendering character and grasping the hidden thoughts of his sitter,
he is worthy of a place by Leonardo da Vinci. In his religious paintings
he reached at least once, in _The Meyer Madonna_, the level upon which
Raphael stood, and had his surroundings been different he would have
attained signal success as a painter of sacred compositions. He
attempted no great subtleties of chiaroscuro, nor sought to rival his
Italian contemporaries in the magnificence of their colour; but his
colour is always most harmonious, and both in design and style he was
great.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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