YOUTHFUL DAYS IN AUGSBURG
Birth of Hans Holbein the Younger—Forgeries of dates on early pictures
attributed to him—Various portraits bearing on the question of the
year of his birth—His early life in Augsburg—The family house on the
Vorderer Lech—Early training in his father’s studio—Hans
Burgkmair—Augsburg and the decorative arts.
NO absolutely conclusive proof has yet been discovered of the exact date
of the birth of Hans Holbein the Younger. For years the question was
complicated by more than one forgery of dates and signatures on certain
pictures in Augsburg, and by spurious amplifications made in the modern
copies taken from certain entries in the annals of the convent of St.
Catherine. Owing to these forgeries, Dr. Woltmann, in the first edition
of his book,[66] advanced the opinion that Holbein was born in 1495; but
before the publication of the first volume of the second edition of his
work, in 1874, these inscriptions and entries had been proved to be
falsifications, and he then altered the date to 1497,[67] and this is
now generally accepted as correct. Equal doubt existed at one time as to
the place of his birth. Among earlier writers, Carel van Mander (1604)
and Patin (1676) stated that he was born in Basel, while Matthis Quad
gave his birthplace as Grünstadt in the Palatinate. Sandrart (1675) was
the first biographer to name Augsburg, which modern research has shown
to be correct. The forgeries, no doubt, were the result of the discovery
that Holbein was not a Swiss, as had been usually supposed, and were
intended to supply convincing evidence that he was of German origin, and
a citizen of Augsburg, and also to furnish proof of the precocity of his
youthful genius.
[Sidenote: THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH]
The chief forgery was an inscription on a picture in the Augsburg
Gallery (Nos. 74-77), dated 1512, which until 1845 had always been
rightly regarded as the work of the elder Holbein. This picture is one
of the four panels which originally formed the inner and outer sides of
the two shutters of an altar-piece or shrine painted for the convent of
St. Catherine.[68] The two inner panels represent the Martyrdom of St.
Catherine[69] and the Legend of St. Ulrich, the patron saint of
Augsburg; the outer ones the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and the Virgin
and St. Anne teaching the Infant Christ to walk. On the panel
representing St. Catherine the date 1512 occurs on a votive tablet
containing a Latin prayer to the saint, while on the old original frame
the name of the painter, “Hans Holbain,” the two last letters of the
surname now defaced, stands in gold letters.[70] It was upon the panel
representing the Virgin and St. Anne with the Infant Christ[71] that the
false inscription was placed. In this picture Mary and her Mother are
seated, each holding a hand of the youthful Saviour, who stands between
them on the bench making his first attempts to walk. Three small angels
hold up a curtain behind them, and at the top of the panel is a band of
rich Renaissance ornamentation, with two cupids blowing horns.[72] St.
Anne holds an open book on her lap with her left hand; and when, in
1854, the panel was separated from its obverse side and cleaned and
restored, a Latin inscription upon this book came to light, parts of
which were hidden by the hand of the saint. This inscription stated that
the picture had been painted “by order of the venerable and most pious
mother Veronica Welser—Hans Holbain, of Augsburg, at the age of 17.”[73]
Before this Dr. Waagen[74] and several other critics had attributed this
altar-piece to the younger Holbein because of supposed differences in
style between it and the greater number of the authenticated works by
the father. The newly-discovered inscription, which was accepted as
genuine by Dr. Woltmann and most German writers, was considered to
afford final proof of the truth of Waagen’s contention, though a few,
among them Herman Grimm, refused to credit it. It was not until after
the death of A. Eigner, the keeper of the Augsburg Gallery, and the
originator of the falsification, in November 1870, that it was possible
to apply a practical test to it, with the result that it proved to be a
modern forgery. Upon the application of turpentine the whole of the
inscription disappeared, and traces of a much earlier and badly-defaced
one were found beneath it. The discovery of its fictitious nature led to
further investigation, and the final abandonment of the date 1495 as the
year of the painter’s birth, while the picture is now rightly restored
to the older artist who painted it.
[Sidenote: THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH]
Far more reliable proof as to the correct date of Holbein’s birth is
afforded by the fine silver-point drawing by the elder painter, in the
Berlin Museum, of the heads of his two sons (Pl. 6).[75] Between the
heads is written “Holbain,” and over that of the younger boy on the
right the word “Hanns,” with the age “14” above the name. Over the head
of the elder boy on the left the shortened name “Prosy” is still
legible. Probably the first syllable, “Am,” has become obliterated in
course of time, or it may be that the father merely set down his
nickname, “Prosy.”[76] The age of Ambrosius, which must also have been
added, is now entirely effaced. At the top of the sheet is placed the
date, which to-day is barely legible. Dr. Woltmann read it as “1511,”
which would give the birth-year of Hans as 1497, and this reading is now
generally accepted. The same writer imagined that he could trace the
figure “5” above the head of Ambrosius, which would make his age
fifteen, and thus one year older than his brother. In the drawing
itself, however, he appears to be at least two or three years the
senior. Dr. Willy Hes, in his recently-published book on Ambrosius
Holbein, states that this now almost obliterated age-figure is “17,” and
this is probably correct.[77] Both heads are full of character. The
younger boy, with round face, and straight hair falling on his forehead
and covering his ears, though not a child of much personal beauty, has a
pleasant, thoughtful expression. The forehead is a fine one, projecting
over the eyes, and showing, according to phrenologists, a
strongly-developed power of imagination, while the mouth is large and
determined. Ambrosius has more mobile features, and a mass of curling
hair. This drawing, which at one time was attributed to the younger
Hans, is one of the most masterly in the Berlin series, and shows how
largely the son’s great gift of lifelike portraiture was inherited from
his father.
[Sidenote: THE YOUNGER HOLBEIN’S BIRTH]
Dr. Hes also publishes a second drawing by the elder Holbein from the
Berlin collection,[78] which, as he was the first to point out,
undoubtedly represents the two boys at an earlier age. This silver-point
drawing, hitherto known merely as “Portraits of two Children,” and
bearing the inscription “Thomasins Sohn und Tochter” in a later hand,
represents the two boys in profile, facing one another. It is not of
such fine quality as the drawing of 1511, but the likeness to Ambrosius
and Hans is unmistakable. In this earlier study Dr. Hes considers the
age of the boys to be eight and five respectively. The further
researches of the same writer have resulted in his discovery of a third
likeness of the elder son from his father’s pencil, a beautiful drawing
of a curly-haired lad with looks cast downwards. It is among the
silver-point drawings of Hans Holbein the Elder in the Basel
collection,[79] and seems to be connected with two other works by the
Augsburg master, both also at Basel, for which, perhaps, it may have
served as a preliminary study. One is an Indian-ink study for a “Death
of Mary,” and the other a large oil-painting of the same subject (No.
301). In both the features of the youthful St. John, who bends over the
Virgin with palm-branch and long candle in either hand, are evidently
those of Ambrosius. This drawing[80] is dated 1508 on a slate hanging at
the head of the bed, so that the “St. John” represents the boy at the
age of about fourteen. A still more youthful figure, with long hair,
stands behind the wooden head of the bed, with clasped hands, gazing
down at the Virgin. It may be suggested, though Dr. Hes does not call
attention to it, that in this figure we have a third likeness of the
younger Hans. The resemblance to the heads in the two drawings is not as
close as in the case of Ambrosius, but is sufficiently so to permit the
conjecture that the father intended to introduce both his boys into the
picture to be painted from this study. The connection between these
drawings and the picture at Basel is not, however, very clear. In the
oil-painting[81] Mary is enthroned, the arrangement is entirely
different, and many more figures are introduced; but the figure and face
of the St. John are the same as in the Indian-ink drawing, though seen
from the opposite side. According to the Basel catalogue, however, this
picture was painted in 1501, and it does not appear very probable that
the painter would have used a boy of seven as his model for the Saint.
Behind St. John appears the curly head of a young man looking down; and
here again, though possibly only in the imagination of the present
writer, there is a faint resemblance to Hans the Younger. But this
cannot be so if the picture was painted in 1501, when Hans was only
four. The same figure of St. John occurs also in the “Death of
Mary,”[82] on one of the panels of the Kaisheimer altar-piece at Munich.
We have thus, in these drawings, together with the “Basilica of St.
Paul” picture of 1504, portraits of Ambrosius Holbein at the ages of
eight, ten, fourteen, and seventeen respectively, and of Hans when five,
seven, and fourteen,[83] and also, if the likeness in the Indian-ink
drawing of 1508 be allowed, at the age of eleven as well.
VOL. I., PLATE 6.
[Illustration:
AMBROSIUS AND HANS HOLBEIN
1511
_Silver-point drawing_
HANS HOLBEIN THE ELDER
ROYAL PRINT ROOM, BERLIN
]
Further evidence as to his birth-date is afforded by two engravings, by
Vorsterman and Hollar respectively, and several miniatures of Holbein by
himself, some of the latter being only early copies, all of which are
dated 1543, and give the age as forty-five. Vorsterman’s print, which is
4¾ inches in diameter, shows no date on the background, but round the
outside is engraved “Ioannes Holbenius Pictor Regis Magnæ Britanniæ Sui
Cæculi Celeberrimus Anno 1543 Ætat: 45.” Hollar’s etching is also
circular. There is no lettering round the rim, but across the background
is inscribed: “HH. Æ. 45—AN^o 1543.” Below is the legend—“Vera Effigies
Johannis Holbeinii Basiliensis Pictoris et Deliniatoris rarissimi. Ipse
Holbeinius pinxit, Wenceslaus Hollar aqua forti æri insculpsit. Ex
Collec: Arundel: 1647.”[84] The original paintings from which these two
engravings were taken have not been discovered, but they were, no doubt,
two small roundels in oils.[85] In Carel van Mander’s time two such
portraits were in existence. He says, when speaking of Holbein’s works
then in Amsterdam: “At the house of Jacques Razet, the fine arts
amateur, I saw Holbein’s portrait, painted by himself very prettily and
neatly, in miniature, with a small margin round it; and in the
possession of Bartholomäus Ferreris, I saw a second, about the size of
the palm of my hand, excellently and neatly executed in flesh
tints.”[86] Sandrart, who was in Amsterdam between 1639 and 1645, gave
to the collector Le Blond a small round portrait of Holbein, and this is
probably identical with the one which Van Mander saw in the possession
of Razet. From Le Blond, who acted as agent for the Earl, it may well
have passed into the Arundel Collection before 1647, in which year
Hollar etched it. Vorsterman’s engraving is not dated, but it is
evidently taken from the same or an almost similar original, and this
artist engraved other pictures in the Arundel collection. According to
Walpole, the picture in the Earl’s possession was dated. He says,
quoting from one of the pocket-books of Richard Symonds:—“In the
Arundelian collection was a head of Holbein, in oil, by himself, most
sweet, dated 1543.”[87] The various miniatures of the painter, the
greater number of which are merely good and almost contemporary copies,
described in a later chapter,[88] have all, with one possible exception,
the same date, 1543, upon them, and, like the engravings, represent the
artist with a beard, wearing a black skull-cap, and, in those which show
the hands, in the act of painting. The exception is the fine miniature
in the Salting Collection, which is inscribed “ETATIS SVÆ 35,” but is
without date. It is almost certain, however, that this miniature does
not represent the painter.[89]
[Sidenote: HOLBEIN’S BIRTHPLACE]
The fact that the inscriptions on these various engravings and
miniatures agree as to the date and the age of the painter does not
necessarily prove that such date and age were placed by the artist
himself upon the original painting on which most of them are based; but
the probability is that such was the case, and that Holbein, therefore,
was forty-five years old in 1543. Unless, however, more definite
evidence is forthcoming in the future, the question must remain
undecided, though it is practically certain that his birth took place
either in 1497 or 1498.
Nothing is known of Holbein’s early life in Augsburg, where he spent the
greater part of his first seventeen years. It is not very likely that
his father took his family with him upon his painting expeditions to
Ulm, Frankfurt, and elsewhere, although he became a burgher of the
first-named place for a time. It was the custom at that period for a
painter to leave wife and children at home while he visited other
centres in search of work or to carry out commissions. The house in
which the young Hans is supposed to have been born is still standing in
Augsburg, and bears a recording tablet on its front. It is in the
Vorderer Lech, No. 496A, one of the quieter streets of the city to-day.
It is thus described by Mr. Davies: “The Vorderer Lech obtains its name
from the fact that a narrow channel of the Lech runs clear and green
down one side of the street, separating the roadway from the houses on
the north side. Access is gained to these houses in most instances by a
wooden bridge or gangway which leads the visitor under an archway in the
house itself. The house of the Holbeins, one of those little whitewashed
buildings with the comfortable red-tiled roofs which are so plentiful in
the city, has nothing to distinguish it beyond the tablet aforesaid. You
pass under the arch, and find on either side the doors (still retaining
their ancient hinges) and the open staircase which leads to the separate
tenements into which the house is now divided. Ascending the staircase
to the right, one finds the little room wherein tradition has it that
our Hans Holbein was born, the little kitchen over which his mother
presided, and the room which is traditionally regarded as the painting
room of Hans Holbein the elder. It looks pleasantly out over enclosed
gardens and picturesque roofs up towards the statelier buildings of the
Maximilianstrasse. The house is not luxurious, but may well have been a
house of no small comfort in the days when the Holbeins held it.”[90]
It is impossible to point to any work of this period which can be
accepted without question as from the hand of the younger Holbein alone.
Both he and his brother Ambrosius received a very thorough training in
their father’s workshop, and for the last few years before their
departure for Basel they must have taken an active though minor share in
the completion of the various commissions which fell to the elder
painter. Many attempts have been made to separate the work of the father
from that of his sons in such pictures as the “St. Catherine”
altar-piece panels of 1512, already described, and the more famous “St.
Sebastian” altar-piece in Munich; but the critics have never been able
to come to any settled agreement as to the particular parts of these
pictures, if any, which were the actual work of the younger Hans. It is
only possible to say with some certainty that he must have been employed
by his father on the less important portions of his altar-pieces, and
that such work would be carried out under the personal direction of the
elder painter, who alone was responsible for the general design and
composition, and the arrangement of the colour-scheme, if not for the
actual painting of the figures and the chief passages of the pictures.
It is not possible to allow, as some writers have done, that such
figures as the St. Elizabeth and St. Barbara on the shutters of the
Munich “St. Sebastian” altar-piece were conceived and carried out by the
younger Holbein independently of his father, although he may have shared
to some small extent in the actual painting of the panels. They display
a more advanced technique, and an art in all ways more matured, than is
to be found in the earliest independent work of Holbein’s first Basel
period.
[Sidenote: THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN AUGSBURG]
In his father’s studio Holbein obtained a very complete grounding in all
the technical processes of his art, and was encouraged to develop that
extraordinary gift for portraiture which he had largely inherited. The
family seems to have been so frequently hard-pressed for money that the
two boys would be obliged, at as early an age as possible, to begin to
work seriously for a living, and in this way would gain much useful
practical knowledge and facility in the handling of brush and pencil. In
other respects Holbein’s art was apparently more strongly influenced by
the example of Hans Burgkmair, who was some twenty-five years his
senior, than by that of his own father, and more particularly in his
ready assimilation of the newer methods and aspirations springing from
the Italian Renaissance, which afterwards became so perfectly blended in
his painting with those older forms and conceptions of the Germanic
school of the fifteenth century, in which he was first trained in the
elder Holbein’s workshop. Burgkmair returned from Italy about 1508, full
of enthusiasm for the new movement, and his example must have acted as
an inspiration to Holbein’s budding genius. Not only in his pictures and
wall-paintings, but in his remarkable designs for woodcuts for the two
great works in his own honour projected by the Emperor Maximilian—the
“Weisskunig,” and the “Triumphal Procession”—Burgkmair exercised an
undoubted influence over his younger contemporary. A year or two later
in Basel Holbein’s art appears to have been affected to some extent,
though indirectly, by that of Hans Baldung Grien and Matthias Grünewald,
through the medium of some painter whose name so far has not been
traced.[91] Other causes, too, were at work in moulding him for his
future career. The city of Augsburg was exceptionally well fitted for
providing incentives to a young artist to develop his powers in many
directions. The practice of decorating the more important buildings of
the city and the mansions of its merchant-princes with wall-paintings
both within and without provided work for numerous artists, and in this
way, no doubt, Holbein first began to practise a form of art which a few
years later he was to carry to so high a pitch of excellence in Lucerne
and Basel. Numerous printers, too, were settled in the city, who
provided employment for many wood-engravers and designers of book
illustrations and ornamentation—the latter a form of art in which
Holbein was very busily engaged during the first ten years of his
residence in Switzerland. His skill, too, in making designs for workers
in gold and silver, in enamels and painted glass, must have received its
first encouragement in Augsburg, which was noted for its craftsmen.
Every branch of handicraft, indeed, was practised there. Its armourers,
headed by the great Kolman family, were celebrated throughout Europe,
while the Augsburg goldsmiths were equally famous for the artistic
excellence and fine workmanship of their productions. Among such masters
in their various arts the youthful Holbein moved, and it must have been
from personal intercourse with them that he gained his first knowledge
of design, and how it should be rightfully applied to the service of the
several decorative arts, and how best modified to suit the nature of the
materials used in each particular handicraft; and that he made the most
of his opportunities is proved by the fact that when, a few years later,
he started upon an independent career in Basel, the first works he
produced show him to have been even at that early age an almost complete
master of decorative design.
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