If we may accept the balance of evidence, Hans Holbein was born in the
last years of the fifteenth century in Augsburg, then a city of great
importance. The visitor to Bavaria to-day will find few traces of its
vanished prosperity, but in the years when Hans Holbein was a little boy
Augsburg held merchant princes by the dozen, and men of distinction by
the score, and enjoyed the favour of the Emperor Maximilian, himself no
mean patron of the arts. In such a city at the beginning of the sixteenth
century there would have been a certain community of interest between
the leaders of state, commerce, and religion, who, keenly conscious
of the honour that had come to Italy through the Revival of Learning
and the practice of the arts, would do all that in them lay to devote a
part of their wealth and leisure to placing their city in an honourable
position. Civic pride was rampant throughout the great cities of Europe
in the Middle Ages, and Augsburg was no exception to the rule. Holbein's
father, whose work may be studied to great advantage in Berlin, was an
artist of repute. He belonged to the Guild of Painters that had been
successfully established in the city, and enjoyed the patronage of the
leisured classes to an extent that brought a measure of prosperity to
all its members. The practice of the arts was comparatively new to
Augsburg, and doubtless the story of Italian prosperity had lost nothing
on its journey across the Tyrol. The Bavarian city would expect its
prosperous Guild to achieve distinction, and was ready and able to
respond to progress, so that the conditions were very favourable to
endeavour and to success. Every great city sought to achieve renown by
raising in its midst, or attracting to its circle, scholars and artists
of world-wide repute. Hans Holbein had a double advantage. Not only was
the time ripe for his achievements, but the family surroundings were
of the kind calculated to develop his powers early. His father, nephew,
and brothers were painters, and from his earliest years he would have
been brought into intimate touch with the life and work of artists.
He would have had access to the hall of the Painters' Guild, where as
much as could be secured of the world's fine work was to be seen. The
Guild was the centre of a great city's enthusiasms; the work was
criticised and studied. Great financiers of Augsburg brought artists
and craftsmen from other towns, and it is safe to assume that the best
of them would have been found in the hall of the Guild from time to time
exhibiting their own work, and telling an interested gathering of the
wonders of other cities in days when the journey across the frontiers of
one's own country was not to be safely or lightly undertaken. The elder
Holbein would have introduced his son into the best artistic circles
of his time and place; for although he does not seem to have been the
leading artist of his city, he received important commissions from the
religious houses, and the collection of sketches in the Berlin National
Gallery shows how much the son owed to the father, and what a clever
fellow the father was.