Hans Holbein

de Oskar Bätschmann

Holbein was a hugely ambitious artist, and even during his formative years in Lucerne and Basle undertook to make designs for jewelry, stained glass and woodcuts as well as to paint major altarpieces and portraits. He also carried out several monumental decorative schemes for private houses and civic buildings. This book offers both a remarkable range of extant visual evidence and a rewarding and scholarly account of Holbein's oeuvre in its full historical and artistic contexts. In addition, the authors include a reappraisal of the high reputation in which Holbein was held during the centuries following his death, as illustrated by the opinion expressed by the Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard and the searches undertaken by the French collector Charles Patin, and by the remarks and exertions of the wealthy eighteenth-century dilettante Horace Walpole.