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| Hans Holbein the Younger (1542) |
Among the many delights of Holbein: Capturing Character at the Morgan Library is seeing several of the indelible characters who populate Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy although Thomas Cromwell himself is sadly absent. We have to settle for an unidentified woman believed to have been part of Cromwell's household.
I remember seeing A Man for All Seasons and Anne of the Thousand Days as a kid in El Paso, both of which have decidedly different takes on Henry VIII's reign than Mantel, especially in the former's depiction of Sir Thomas More. He impressed me then as the embodiment of moral authority--as Holbein paints him--whereas he now seems rather foolish.
Other members of Henry VIII's court don't get the royal treatment. Then as now in commissioned portraiture, it's always about the pecking order.
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| Sir Thomas Wyatt |
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| Sir Nicholas Carew |
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| Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey |
Unless you fomented the Reformation!
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| Martin Luther (1525) |
Or composed love poetry, as the symbolism suggests this young man did.
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| Simon George (ca 1535-40) |
Mantel tells a likely apocryphal story about Cromwell commissioning
Hans Holbein the Younger to paint the portraits of all the English kings who preceded Henry. While the artist accepts, he worries that he doesn't know what his subjects actually looked like. Cromwell insists it doesn't matter; the symbolism of Henry's portrait at the end of the royal lineage trumps verisimilitude.
In any case, Holbein died rather young (~45) after a brilliant career that took off under the wing of
Erasmus of Rotterdam, a mover and shaker in both philosophy and Catholicism 30 years his senior.
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| 1532 |
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| ca. 1532 |
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| 1526 |
Holbein's designs for medallions are just as meticulous as his portraits.
Digital photography makes it possible enlarge his death-related woodcut designs to better see their incredible intricacy.
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| Images of Death (ca. 1526) |
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| Creation of Eve |
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| Expulsion from Paradise |
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| Death and the Rich Man |
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| Death and the Sailor |
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| Death and the Abbott |
There's even an alphabet.
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