Hans Holbein the Elder

Hans Holbein the Younger became an English court painter and is one of the most important portraitists of the Renaissance. His father, called Holbein the Elder (1465-1524), was one of the most important painters in his hometown of Augsburg at the turn of the late Gothic and Renaissance periods.

To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, he is now being honored by the art collections and museums with a special exhibition at the Schaezlerpalais. “Guest curator Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas Tacke (Trier) offers a multifaceted insight into the city of “Augsburg on the threshold of the European art metropolis”, not as an individual exhibition, but in the context of fellow artists of the time. Around 50 painters were organized in guilds here at the time.

Thanks to Holbein and his colleagues, Augsburg rose to become the most important art center north of the Alps. Some of the 64 exhibits from the museum’s own holdings and loans from Berlin, Munich, Vienna and private collections have never or rarely been shown before for conservation reasons. It is astonishing that none of the important altars that Holbein the Elder traditionally created for Augsburg in collaboration with important artists such as Adolf Daucher and sculptors such as Gregor Erhart are still in their original location.

One of the absolute highlights is Holbein’s early small half-length panel painting of “Mary caressing the child” from the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, painted around 1496/99. Mother and child enchant with their intimate connection against a gold background with densely placed dots, as we know it from the Old Netherlanders or Byzantine Marian icons. Holbein’s large-format “Votive picture of Ulrich Schwarz the Younger with Christ and Mary as intercessors before God the Father” is around ten years younger, including the wine merchant-landlord with his 17 sons, 14 daughters and three wives. It introduces us to a dramatic facet of Augsburg’s city history, as his fraudulent father of the same name was hanged on April 18, 1478.

Holbein’s portrait drawing of the culprit can be seen several times, but only in later copies. However, the numerous hand drawings by Holbein and his fellow artists form an important focus of the show. Six powerful, richly figurative watercolor pen and ink drawings depict scenes of Christ and the death of Mary and are considered to be the joint work of Holbein the Elder and his younger brother Sigmund. They bear the famous “AD” monogram, which was probably applied by a former collector rather than the great Nuremberg painter as a typical time stamp. Israhel van Meckenem’s series of twelve engravings of the life of Mary by Holbein the Elder shows that Holbein’s designs also encouraged important printmakers to imitate them.

In 1514, Jörg Breu the Elder transformed Holbein’s “Farewell to the Apostles”, which was loosely conjured up on paper, into an oil painting. We look back to the heyday of portrait art: how Hans Burgkmair the Elder painted the Augsburg artist in 1490. In 1490, Hans Burgkmair the Elder captured the Bishop of Augsburg, Friedrich II, Count of Zollern/Hohenzollern, with a serious expression as a bust portrait in his habit, or how the “Master of Augsburg Painter Portraits” (formerly Leonhard Beck) painted a member of the Ren (Rehm) family in 1505 – probably with knowledge of Dürer’s famous self-portrait of 1500 in a fur-trimmed coat.

However, it is above all the lively hand drawings that captivate the visitor with their quality and abundance: In 1504, Holbein the Elder conjured up “Two children’s heads facing each other in profile” in silverpoint on a primed sheet, probably depicting the brothers Hans Holbein the Younger and Ambrosius. The sensitivity with which Holbein captured a wide variety of people and characters with his pencil is also evident in the “Study of Veronika Vetter with family coat of arms” in her nun’s habit from 1496 from the famous “Kleines Klebeband” or the portrait of John VI Schrott, prior and later abbot of St. Ulrich and Afra, which illustrate the entire range of expression. The enchanting back figure of “St. Thekla” rightly became the “mascot” of the exhibition: Holbein’s pen-and-ink study in brown on reddish-tinted paper from the “Kleines Klebeband” Incidentally, the posters and the catalog cover lead the viewer into the picture, as it were: dressed in typical period garb and modern in effect, she radiates a beguiling artistic charm!

The sculptural half-figure of Hans Holbein the Elder, which is over one meter tall, is a contemporary work. It is a lively, naturalistic leather sculpture typical of the Augsburg-based artist Hella Buchner-Kopper. Buchner-Kopper used Holbein’s study drawing from Chantilly as a model, which shows the exhibition visitor the way, as it were. And the accompanying volume contains a series of essays that could be of particular interest to inquisitive minds: For example, on the “Guild Monopoly”, on “Material Purchasing and Product Sales”, “Workshop Size and Collaborations” by Danica Brenner; or “Holbein’s Augsburg Workshop: a Conveyor for Young Talent”, “The Collector Wilhelm Sattler (1784-1859)”, “Holbein in Alsace. Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece” (Andreas Tacke) and “Model of a conservational quarter-fold album for mounting drawings” (Svenja Brucker et al.).

The older Holbein. Augsburg on the threshold to the European art metropolis – Augsburg, Kunstsammlungen & Museen, Schaezlerpalais, until 20.10.2024, accompanying volume 29,95 Euro