Holbein in close-up: the techniques that allowed Holbein to achieve his astounding naturalism are analysed in this sumptuously illustrated account of his work in England

Apollo, August, 2005 by Karen Hearn

Holbein and England

Susan Foister

Yale University Press, 45 [pounds sterling]/$65 ISBN 0 300 10280 1

Holbein's image of Henry VIII--and its many derivations--has become iconic. Yet, as this book reveals, surprisingly little is known about the professional relationship between the two men. This major publication examines the English work of Hans Holbein II--the most internationally significant painter to work in Britain before the arrival of Sir Anthony van Dyck in the seventeenth century. Dr Foister is the best possible person to have written it, as Holbein has been the main focus of her researches for almost twenty-five years. The book also provides a foretaste of her exhibition on the same subject for Tate Britain, which will open in October 2006.

Holbein--born in southern Germany in 1497 or 1498--initially travelled from Basel to England in 1526 with a letter of introduction to Sir Thomas More, and was soon working for Henry VIII's court. Returning to Basel in 1528, he reappeared in London in 1531 or 1532 and remained there until his death (probably from plague) in 1543. His surviving oeuvre from this English period amounts to more than fifty paintings (almost all portraits) on wooden panel, some portrait miniatures, almost a hundred drawings for portraits, another hundred for decorative commissions, and a number of woodcuts. Important large narrative paintings that he produced in London have not survived.

Documented facts about his life and working practices in England are few. Dr Foister runs through these, but she is particularly interested in how Holbein fits into the wider narrative of British art. In the past, Holbein has generally been studied as a figure isolated from his English contemporaries but Dr Foister delves into the local English milieu that he entered, and within which his work can very fruitfully be understood. She assembles a considerable amount of new information on the visual arts in England in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries before Holbein's arrival, on the other court artists who worked in parallel with him, and on those active after his death. In fact, as she makes clear, he was to have surprisingly little direct impact on the practices of his successors.

The physical construction of Holbein's works is investigated in precise detail. For the first time, the question of those paintings that are 'nearly-Holbein', but not quite, is sensibly explored. Derivations and copies are carefully identified, although who produced them, and precisely how, seems to remain unresolvable. Dr Foister seeks to explain some of the techniques by which Holbein achieved his effects of startling naturalism and characterisation. She suggests, for instance, that he reduces the size of the sitter's body, while enlarging the facial features at the expense of the rest of the head. Thus in 'a diminished head the eyes, nose and mouth are all shown as larger and more prominent than they would have been in life'.

We learn much about Holbein's patrons and sitters, and about the visual imagery with which these clients would have been familiar-including religious images, secular pictures and portraits. An informative appendix lists Holbein's known sitters, with details of related surviving wills and/or inventories. These confirm that, although the Reformation was well under way in mid-sixteenth-century England, ownership of narrative paintings, particularly on religious subjects, was common. Dr Foister considers how people acquired paintings, how financial valuations of them were made, and by whom.

One section is devoted to Holbein's engagement with the English Reformation. Another examines the portraits he made of German Hanseatic merchants based in London's Steelyard--portraits apparently intended to be sent back home to their familles, and subtly differing in form from those produced for English clients. A further section is devoted to portraits of and for Henry VIII. Among these, of course, are the likenesses of potential royal brides that Holbein traversed Europe to record for Henry in 1538 and 1539, following the death of Jane Seymour. These included Louise of Guise and, probably, Mary of Guise in Le Havre in June 1538; Renee of Guise in Nancy (but without success) and Anne of Lorraine in Joinville later that summer; and in August 1539 at Duren, Anne and Amelia, the two daughters of the Duke of Cleves. (To Henry's chagrin, his idea that potential brides might be paraded before him at Calais was deemed wholly unacceptable.) Of these portraits, only the full-length of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan (National Gallery, London), taken in March 1538, and the half-length and miniature of Anne of Cleves (respectively Louvre, Paris, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London) survive.

The quality of the illustrations is outstanding. Carefully chosen full-page details introduce us to the sumptuous handling of the fabrics of Jane Seymour's costume (p. 189; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Smaller works are reproduced larger than actual size--it is exciting to see the full depth of the page used to reproduce the miniature of Mrs Small (p. 256; 5.3 cm in diameter, Victoria and Albert Museum), enabling the reader to savour Holbein's handling of her facial features, the blackwork-embroidered lawn at her neck and wrists, and the fresh, green sprig of leaves in her hand. It demonstrates that this tiny work can take such magnification and still pack a visual punch.