Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young PeopleBacon, Mary Schell Hoke
General
Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People
Bacon, Mary Schell Hoke
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painters -- Juvenile literature; Painting -- Juvenile literature
Holbein had a cold, light-blue eye; Dürer a soft and tender
glance. While Dürer lived he was the mainstay of his family--father
and brothers. Holbein's father died in misery and his brother's life
was disastrous, Hans doing nothing to serve them and looking on at
their sufferings indifferently.
There is a court document in existence which tells the particulars of
Hans Holbein's arrest for getting into a brawl with a lot of
goldsmiths' apprentices during a night of carousal. The court warned
him that he would be more severely punished if he did not cease his
lawless life and he was made to promise not to "jostle, pinch, nor
beat his lawful spouse." When he died he made no provision in his will
for his family. There is a picture of his wife, Elizabeth Schmidt, to
be seen in his "Madonna" at Solothurn Holbein used her for the
model. She then was young and blooming and the model for the child was
his own baby; at that time he found them useful.
His life of folly can hardly be excused by impulsiveness or emotion,
for his pictures show little of either. He was best at portrait
painting. At that time guilds and town councils wanted the portraits
of their members preserved in some way, and it was the habit of
painters like Holbein to form picturesque groups and give to such
dramatic groupings the features of townsmen. Rembrandt did this much
later than Holbein, when he painted the "Night Watch," or as it is
more properly called, "The Sortie."
Probably Holbein's first important work was to make title pages for
the second edition of Martin Luther's translation of the New
Testament. This MS. was made about the time that Holbein's work began
to be of interest to the public, and so the commission was given to
him.
After a time this artist went to England with letters of introduction
to Sir Thomas More, Chancellor to King Henry VIII. Sir Thomas treated
him very kindly and set him to work making portraits of his own
family. During the time he was living at More's home in Chelsea, the
King himself, used frequently to visit there, and on one occasion he
saw the brilliant portraits of the More family and inquired about the
artist. Sir Thomas offered the King any of the pictures he liked, but
Henry VIII. asked to see the artist. When brought before him,
Holbein's fortune seemed to be made for the King asked him to go to
court and paint for him, remarking that "now he had the artist he did
not care about the pictures."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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