Original subtitles

Hanz Holbein has claims to be the greatest portrait painter who ever wielded a brush, a central

figure in the spread of the Renaissance in Northern Europe whose deathness and pinpoint

accuracy captured the spirit and the faces of his age, an artist whose roots were continental,

but he became the father of English painting.

Hanz Holbein the younger was born in Germany in the imperial capital of Augsburg in

4098. He came from an artistic family, his father, Hanz Holbein the elder, was one of

the leading artists of his generation in southern Germany, and his elder brother, Ambrosius,

was already shown a precocious talent for drawing. So, as soon as the two boys could be made

use of, they joined their father's workshop. But Augsburg was a lot more limited,

artistically, the father of fields, particularly along the Rhine to the south, things looked

a lot more promising. And so, in 1515, Hanz, together with his older brother, came here to the

city that he effectively put on the European artistic map, Basel. Basel was an attractive place

for a young artist on the make, a thriving commercial city on the Rhine. It boasted a

newly established university and a flourishing collection of printing presses. Books, pamphlets

and title pages all need illustration, which Holbein was eager to supply. He was quickly

accepted into Basel's intellectual circles, led by the humanist scholar, Desiderius Erasmus,

and it was a version of Erasmus' in praise of Foley, which gave the young artist an opportunity

to show his skills, with a commission to provide illustrations in the margin of the celebrated

satirical text, which analyzed human behavior and weakness. When he was 18, Holbein got his

first illustrious portrait commission to do a picture of the newly elected mayor of Basel,

Yakov Mayev on Harzen, and his wife Dorothea. This is a very inventive picture. For a start,

it's official, he's just been elected mayor, but the two figures are dressed relatively

informally. But also, it's a double portrait that has two distinct images, who are separated

and yet they're bound together by the same architectural detail in the background,

and a consistent light source that casts a shadow in here from the right. The cast shadows

on the architectural detail there and there. So what we have is two figures who are unified,

but at the same time their own individuality is proclaimed. With Holbein, even from this stage,

the detailing is extraordinary. And you look at the rings, numerous rings on the mayor's

fingers. It looks like a knuckle luster to our eyes, but actually it's a sign of his own prosperity.

He's a financier. He clutches a coin as a symbol of that, but also symbolising the fact that

Basel has just been given permission to mint coins. He also points towards his wife in a gesture of love.

In a way it's a rather unglamorous portrait for background and the detailing is lavish,

but these two figures are certainly not made to look particularly attractive. It's as if Holbein

is painting them as they are or as they were. But Holbein's also making his own mark, and for the first

time, he signs his work. His initials HH in the date, 1560, and a shield or a scroll surrounded by

a campus leaves. As if he's throwing off the shackles of his apprenticeship and emerging for the

first time as if fully fleshed artist. And he fact from this moment on, his career takes off.

He gets a commission from the mayor to decorate the Basel Council Chamber, which is subsequently

destroyed, but from then on in other portrait commissions also roll in.

Including this one of Bonnefassius Amabac, a professor of law at Basel University.

This was an important commission for Holbein. For not only was Amabac a close friend of

Erasmus, but he became an important collector of Holbein's works. Here it's clear that his approach

was evolving, a rare square format with a landscape adding depth to the image, and the painting

containing an inscribed panel proclaiming its own merits. It reads,

I may be painted unreal, but I am not inferior to life. I am my master's true likeness as he was

at eight times three years. Holbein's growing confidence stemmed in part from his growing acceptance

in Basel, where he was made a master of the guild of painters. He was also granted citizenship

two years later after his marriage to a local woman, El Speth Schmidt, with whom he would have four

children. Holbein also began to turn his attention to religious images, both for public and

private devotion. This altar piece, showing eight episodes of Christ's Passion, was begun by Holbein

in 1524. Some seven years after an Augustinian monk and scholar called Martin Luther,

had nailed his 95 pieces to the door of the castle church in Vittenberg,

railing against the sale of indulgences or pardons from sin by the Catholic Church and triggering

a movement which began with the proposed reform of the papacy and ended up splitting the church.

Otherwise known as the Protestant Reformation, whose impact throughout Europe was huge.

One of the most eloquent examples of painting inspired by the ideas of the Reformation,

as well as being one of the most powerful works in the entire history of religious art,

is this one, Holbein's image of the dead Christ painted in 1521.

What he does is a paradox, because in a way, he's trying to affirm the idea of the Bible and

Christ's life as a living force by painting it as graphically as possible, but through showing

an image of Christ at his lowest egg when he's died and his flesh is beginning to rot and decay.

There's also speculation about the fact that Holbein might have had a body that he found in

the Rhine, put in his studio and used directly as a model for this work. But whether that's true or not,

dead bodies were much more evidence in late medieval or early modern Europe than unlike our

world, theirs was not sanitized from the idea and the image of death. What we see is something that's

very curious and had art historian speculating for the last few centuries. Is this a commission?

Is it the bottom part of an altar piece? Well, there's no evidence to suggest that it is. And in

the end, no records proved that the work was commissioned at all. And what we're left now is the thought

that this may be a personal image of private devotion by Holbein. It's a painting that almost

smells as you get close up to it, such as its power as a trigger for the imagination.

Look at the eyes, how the sockets have become rigid, rigor mortises setting in.

And what Holbein I think is trying to say, I think achieves, is by showing Christ in this

purified form. Christ remembers the word made flesh. He's also emphasizing the miracle of

the resurrection. He's showing Christ as no artist has done before at his lowest ab and in a way,

it's an affirmation of Holbein's own personal faith. It's also a work which establishes him

as one of the great talents of 16th century European painting.

Of all Holbein's patrons in Basel during his early years, by far and away the most important

for his subsequent career was Erasmus, one of the most celebrated scholars of the time.

Erasmus' studies in Latin and Greek enabled him to translate the new testament,

which was eventually published in Basel in 1516, where he first came into contact with Holbein,

whose intense scrutiny of his subjects seemed to strike a chord with the equally thorough scholar,

who commissioned Holbein to produce half a dozen or so portraits of him over the next decade or so.

I love these portraits that Holbein does of Erasmus. They have an attachment in their scrutiny

and their intense observation, but they're also so intimate, and it's as if Holbein and by extension

asked the viewer have somehow crept into Erasmus's study, and he's peeking over the shoulder

of the great scholars, he's wrapped up and he's furline cloak to keep the draft away. And we're

watching, as he writes his commentary to some Mark's Gospel that we can read there, but we've caught him

unaware. And in a way there's a parallel between what the young artist is trying to do and what

his intellectual mentor is doing. As Erasmus scrolls away, so Holbein has this intense control

and in a way he's trying to produce some kind of parallel in a visual form to what Erasmus is doing

in intellectual and written form. But the intellectual and religious turmoil in middle Europe

had certain negative spin-offs for artists, not least, because religious commissions were suddenly

frowned upon. And in addition, Holbein's portrait business here in Basel had all but dried up.

So he looked further afield, starting in 1524 by a trip to France where he tried to get work

at the court of France is the first, but that was unsuccessful. And then, two years later,

probably with a recommendation from Erasmus himself, he set self a tutor England to try and get work

at the court of Henry VIII. And it was during the early part of Henry VIII's reign,

but the Renaissance was established in England. Architects, craftsmen, sculptors, painters and poets

were all encouraged to make the journey across the channel, so that the king and his ministers

might harness their talents to proclaim the power and sophistication of the tutor monarchy.

It was Erasmus's links with England that provided Holbein with his first introduction to the English court.

Chief amongst Erasmus's friends and the first port of Call for Holbein was Thomas Moore,

fellow scholar, and soon to become Lord Chancellor of England. More welcomed Holbein to his Chelsea home

and commissioned him to paint a number of portraits of his household. Most of these no longer survive,

but we have this delicate study for an elaborate family portrait. What does survive, however,

is one of Holbein's most direct and precise portraits, that of the Thomas Moore himself, painted in 1527.

Moore stares off into space, among who thoughts were on this world, and the next,

wearing the rich gold chain of a privy councillor. What really grabs the viewer's attention,

though, perhaps makes the hares stand up on the back of your neck, but the hares on Moore's chin,

and the extraordinary detail rendered through hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny brush strokes,

which creates an image that seems almost photographic.

In spite of his success here in England, Holbein had to return to Basel in 1528 because he was

in danger of losing his citizenship, and over the next few years, in both Switzerland and then

again here in England, he was to witness the full onslaught of the Reformation and its political

consequences. During Holbein's absence, the Reformation had begun to take serious route here in Basel,

and the implications were political, as well as religious, with a small Catholic oligarche being

threatened by a Protestant democracy. But things turned ugly at the beginning of 1529,

on Trove Tuesday when the Holbe city was supposed to be celebrating, and suddenly, an angry mob

came up the hill here to the cathedral, broken, tore down statues, smashed stained glass windows,

and triggered off a wave of iconoclasm throughout the city.

It's difficult to know what Holbein's religious views were at the time. He was born and brought

up a Catholic, and he painted many religious works for Catholic patrons and churches.

It's almost certain that many of Holbein's works were destroyed in the rioting,

as very few still survive. But what he did out of economic necessity and what he did from conviction

will never fully know. There's a clue though to his developing religious inclinations

during the turbulent decade of the 20s in this woodcut Christ as the true light, which shows Christ

pointing to a candle which illuminates the entire image and shows the way to the poor and the ordinary

on the left. Whilst to the right, the pope and other church dignitaries,

follow Plato and Aristotle, the philosophers of the ancient classical pagan world, into the Abyss,

an image of clear and strong Protestant sentiment, challenging the authority of the Catholic church,

and its arcane teachings. During his time back in Basel, Holbein found time to paint a portrait

that wasn't a commission, and in fact, for many, was the most intimate work of his life.

It shows his wife, Ellsworth, and two of his four children, Philip, who's about six,

and Katarina, who's two, that Ellsworth is pregnant with the third child when this was made.

And it's a very curious work, not least, because the background seems so bleak, it's black,

it enhances the figures, it makes them stand out in a relief, and it also emphasises,

in fact, that the composition mirrors the traditional image of the mother and child, or,

in fact, Leonardo's image of Stam, the Madonna, and Child. But in fact, there's something

more practical here, or, in practical, because somewhere down the line, after Holbein finished

this work, and he did the portraits on paper. They've been cut out, and then mounted on a panel,

and so, this isn't quite how they're intended to be seen. But it's a very, very sad work.

His son looks up, I think, more in hope than in expectation, and the daughter, the young

Katarina, doesn't seem to know the figure that's painting him, but look at the face of the wife.

She's red-eyed, a face looks slightly puffy, and it's almost as if she knows that the

Holbein is not going to be around for much longer, and, in fact, he isn't. He can't find work

in Basel, and so, in the end, in 1532, he goes back to England, and never returns, leaving the family,

effectively, to defend for themselves. But the England of 1532 was dramatically different from the

country that Holbein had left in 1528. In fact, it was on the edge of revolution, with Henry

the 8th in the middle of trying to secure a divorce from Katarina Varigan. The divorce scandalized

Europe and led to a split with the papacy, with Henry the 8th proclaiming himself head of the

church in England. Holbein's patron, Satomas Moore, opposed the divorce, resigned, and was eventually

executed, but it doesn't seem to have had a detrimental effect. On the painter's prospects,

because very soon, he was moving in the circle surrounding the future Queen Anne Berlin,

including Moore's rival and later Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell became the architect of the English Reformation, supporting the break with Rome,

and cementing it through the dissolution of the monasteries. He was depicted in both oil paint,

and even more tellingly, in this preparatory drawing by Holbein, as a man of ruthless,

single-minded ambition. And in the midst of all these troubles, and directly connected to them,

Holbein is commissioned to paint what becomes his most celebrated famous and complex work.

This one, the Ambassadors, painted in 1533, showing two men, a rare example of early

example in European art, of a double full-length portrait, Jean de Danfield. He's the Ambassadors

from the French court in London, and Georges de Sav, he's the Bishop of L'Avour, who comes over,

because his friend, Jean, he's having problems negotiating with Henry the 8th on behalf

of the King of France, because Henry is antagonistically involved in an argument with the

Pope. Now, Jean de Danfield commissions the portrait, and that might explain why he seems to be

the most prominent figure. He dominates certainly in terms of surface area. As always with Holbein,

the details give us a much greater sense of knowledge of these two men and their world.

For start, Jean clutches an elaborate dagger sheath that has on it, his age 29. Georges

leans on a book that gives us his age 25. And then, we realise that in the centre of the picture

between the two men is a celebration of the Renaissance world and scholarship that the two of them

practice. So starting at the top, Holbein gives us a celestial globe of the stars and the heavens,

and also recently invented navigational tools. And then down below, there's a terrestrial globe

with France clearly visible. Then, there's an odd textbook. Next to it is a hymn book open

on the page of a hymn written by Martin Luther of all people. And then, to musical instruments,

a loot and a collection of flutes. So what do we make of all this? Well, certain scholars have put

forward the view, and it seems perfectly credible to me, that this mathematical book is about the

process of division, and that loot for himself, as well as being a reformer, is also a

rider of the church, and that the loot with its broken string is a symbol of frailty, but also,

it means that the hymn can't be fully realised. And so what is happening here is that there's

a comment by Holbein on the religious situation, specifically in England, and also more broadly in

Europe. But I think the key to these paintings are in two details that are not here in the centre,

but they're found, first of all, in the top left on corner, which is the crucifix, which is

fairly in view, but it's making its presence felt. But secondly, a much more curious, is this form here,

in the foreground, that you can only see when you start to walk and look from another perspective,

and then you see clearly from this angle that it's a skull through a process known as animal

photos or stretching or distorting the image. And it's clear that there's this great symbol

thrust across the surface of the painting, that is a momentum, more a reminder of death.

And the frailty of human life. And I think the broader point is being made up by Holbein here,

that in fact conflict obscures the truth. The truth is up there in the top left hand corner of

the painting for Holbein. Christ himself crucified on the cross. That's the redemptive hope for mankind.

But I think also, Holbein is making an even more interesting point with this work, and it's to do

with the whole process of painting what Holbein is devoted his life to, because no one in

European art, up to this point, has scrutinized the natural world as closely as Holbein,

and rendered it with such extraordinary care and attention and detail. And what he's managing

to show us in this painting is that you can have scholarship, you can have diplomacy,

you can have an expanded new culture of learning, but that you will never grasp the bigger picture,

you'll never understand the world totally, from one fixed viewpoint, and that you have to see

the world, from a number of different perspectives, and that, I think, is a very profound point.

Within three years of painting the ambassadors, Holbein got the position he really wanted,

painter to the king, and began a series of portraits that have defined how that most familiar

of English monarchs has been seen down the ages. This is the quintessential image of an overbearing

tyrannical monarch. Holbein depicts the king seemingly at face value, emphasizing the small,

humalous eyes and mouth, the curiously flat cheeks and chin, but his authority is clear,

formidable even, amplified by opulent jewelry depicted in real-gold leaf, and helping to

create a domineering presence, even though the work itself is small. Consequently, Henry approved

of the painting, as did Thomas Cromwell, who was cleverly encouraging the use of the painter

to promote the power of the monarch. An idea which was reinforced when Holbein was commissioned

to paint a group portrait of the Tudor dynasty for Henry's white-all palace. The picture subsequently

destroyed in the palace far of 1698, showed Henry and his now third wife Jane Seymour,

together with his parents, Elizabeth of York, and Henry VII. The image of the two Henry's,

which survived in this preparatory drawing, affirms the idea of denastic progression and increasing

power from lean father to vast sun. But the queen Jane Seymour was to die giving birth to Henry's

long awaited air, but the king didn't spend much time mourning. Together with the assistance

of his Chancellor Cromwell, he decided to try and find a new wife, preferably one who would

combine political advantage with the physical beauty that Henry sought, and so Holbein was dispatched

to Europe, to paint suitable candidates from which Henry could then make his matrimonial choice.

Holbein's first port of call is to Brussels to paint this young woman, Christina of Denmark,

the Duchess of Milan. Now she's the younger daughter of the king of Denmark, who's a

Lutheran, and who's been deposed. She's also married to the Duke of Milan, but is a widow,

by the age of 12. Four years later when she's 16, she's ready to sit for this portrait,

because the king of England wants to marry her. The Holbein gets three hours with her,

in the date in March, and he sketches her face and her hands and makes intricate studies,

which is reflected in the finished oil, and when Henry sees the results, Ruma has it that he falls

in love. Certainly, he wants to marry her. He sees, if not a ravishing beauty, someone who's

young and will give him more airs, perhaps a healthier air. But politically, there are machinations.

She's very well connected. She's also the niece of the Emperor Charles V, who doesn't want any

connection with Henry VIII, and so the wedding doesn't take place. Her response, though, is a

bit more diplomatic. She says, if I had two heads, I'd happily place one at the disposal

of the King of England. Henry finally settled on marrying Anne of Cleaves, but Holbein was placed

in an impossible position. He was dispatched to the Rhineland with orders to produce an instant

likeness of Henry's next intended, but he needed to exercise diplomacy intact. Anne's dress seems

to have fascinated Holbein more than the strangely lifeless symmetry of her features.

Anne Henry's displeasure, at finding Anne of Cleaves, more as he put it, like a flat flanders

mare, when she arrived for the marriage ceremony in January 1540, cost Holbein deer in prestige.

In fact, he received no further significant work from Henry. Three years later, having completed

his last portrait, that of himself, Holbein felt seriously ill and died. Probably the

victim of the plague which had spread through London in 1543. He was 45 years old.

Holbein's influence on British painting is enormous. He made the human individual

seem more real and more exposed than any artist before him, and is the father of a tradition of

portraiture which continues to this day. But he also created images of a king and his court,

which is lived on in the popular imagination. Bringing to life, one of the most dramatic

periods in English history.