Holbein: His Life and Works in 500 Images: An illustrated exploration of the artist, his life and context, with a gallery of his paintings and drawings

Hans Holbein the Younger's life is discovered through his artworks, his family, his patrons and the people who met him. Born into a family of talented artists, Holbein learnt to be a draughtsman, a painter, a portraitist, and a designer for woodcuts. What could not be taught was his remarkable skill as a portrait painter. From an Augsburg workshop as a youth, he would achieve high status as Painter to the King at the English court of Henry VIII. Holbein had a talent to engage with his clients, proven by repeated commissions. He could capture a moment in time, from Erasmus sitting in his study in Basel, to rich Hanseatic merchants seated in their London offices. His gift as a painter was grounded in a sound knowledge of pigments, practical costings and time required to complete a work. In his lifetime he created a unique portfolio of ground-breaking art, predominantly in portraiture. This glorious and comprehensive volume is both a biography and gallery of his work

About the Author :
Rosalind Ormiston is a researcher, lecturer and author with a wide range of interests in art, architecture and design history. Since 2002 she has been a lecturer in art and architectural history at Kingston University, London with a specialist field of Renaissance Italy. She writes for academic publications and consumer periodicals. She has written Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, in this series.

Review :

This series from Lorenz Books has been going for a long time and provides a useful, well-illustrated, way into the works of a great many artists from all periods of history. Hans Holbein played a central role in the history of Britain, being Court Painter to Henry VIII, creating images of him for which the word “iconic” can never be redundant and, famously, painting the portrait of Anne of Cleves that caused so much trouble for Thomas Cromwell and led, at least in part, to his downfall. A portrait of Cromwell himself is uncompromising and suggests a figure the artist perhaps didn’t like that much. Did Henry reject “the Flanders mare”, or did the reality of his physical appearance disgust her so much that she rejected him? History does not relate, but it might explain Cromwell’s fate. Henry was not a man to cross in any way.Holbein did, however, have a much broader and longer-sustained career and received commissions form Hanseatic merchants as well as the scholar Erasmus. Details of his early life are sketchy, but Rosalind Ormiston, who has taught art history at Kingston University, provides as much detail as possible. She relates known events from the artist’s life to the chronology of his work and analyses works from the whole gamut of his career, often using enlarged details for clarity and to explain a particular point. The book is large-format and all the illustrations that matter are reproduced at an appropriate size, often full-page. The quality of reproduction is excellent, and certainly remarkable for the price – you get a huge amount, not just of illustrations, but of scholarship, for a ridiculously modest outlay. Overall, a bit of a tour de force. Henry Malt, Art Book Review