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Henry VIII In Wedding Dress (1540) By Hans Holbein The Younger
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| This 1540 portrait of England's Henry VIII showcases the absolute authority of the King. |
Smart About Art
By CHERYL VAN-BUSKIRK & EMILY RICE
Hans Holbein the Younger, 1497-1542, was a German artist and printmaker working in the Northern Renaissance style who is best known as one of the greatest portrait painters of the 16th century. His hallmark was a searching perfectionist approach to depicting the naturalness of each unique face. In the words of art historian John Rowlands:
This striving for perfection is very evident in his portrait drawings, where he searches with his brush for just the right line for the sitter’s profile. The critical faculty in making this choice and his perception of its potency in communicating decisively the sitter’s character is a true measure of Holbein’s supreme greatness as a portrait painter. Nobody has ever surpassed the revealing profile and stance in his portraits: through their telling use, Holbein still conveys across the centuries the character and likeness of his sitters with unrivalled mastery.
Hans Holbein the Younger was born in the free imperial city of Augsburg, now in Germany, where his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, was already an important painter who ran a large and busy workshop. By 1515, Hans Holbein the Younger and his brother, Ambrosius, worked mainly as journeymen painters in Basel, Switzerland. By the age of eighteen, Hans was painting murals and religious works as well as designing stained glass windows, architectural designs and jewelry and printing books. Augsberg was an important trading center, open to economic and cultural enrichment from all over Europe. Like so many great geniuses, he had the good sense to be born into propitious circumstances and was uniquely positioned to absorb the full benefit of the wave of Renaissance Italian influence that replaced the Late Gothic artistic style with a real Northern Renaissance in the German states at the end of the fifteenth century.
As early as 1523 young Holbein produced a portrait of the humanist scholar and priest Erasmus of Rotterdam, which has been described as “at once intimate and monumental.” This talent for capturing both the personal and the public identities of his subjects was to serve Holbein well throughout his career. His work is also valued as a realistic record of 16th century clothing, hair styles and general appearance. Holbein had an ability to convincingly describe fabrics such as velvet or fur, delicate lace and beading with his careful brushwork. The result was a combined aesthetic uniquely his own.
Holbein’s travels throughout Europe in search of patronage befit the truly international artist he was becoming. After a brief stay in France he returned to Basel in 1525 to find his adopted home in the throes of the Protestant Reformation. He then traveled to England, Erasmus’ portrait in hand as a gift for the famous scholar’s good friend Thomas More, who was to become Holbein’s first patron in the British court where he quickly gained a strong reputation.
On another trip back to Basel in 1528, the artist was dismayed to witness an angry Protestant mob destroying religious art as “icons”. That same year he completed a devotional painting of the Madonna and Child with the Meyer family. The passion and sensitivity with which Holbein treated this traditionally Catholic subject, as well as subtle allusions in later work to the underlying tension between man’s mortal destiny and secular humanist philosophy suggest that his conversion may have been reluctant. It was, however, politically expedient for a painter dependent on the support of rich and powerful patrons. So, convert he did, but he also left the country. Holbein was to return to the land of his birth only once more in the course of his travels, as court painter for King Henry VIII, a position Holbein held from 1536 until he died of the plague, or an infection, in 1542.
This 1540 tempra with oil portrait of Henry VIII was commissioned in anticipation of the English King’s wedding to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Henry was at the height of his power and everything about the painting is meant to impress: the rigidly immobile, frontal pose communicates the absolute power of the King, his left hand rests on the hilt of his sword with the jewels and rich fabrics, splendidly rendered in the relatively new medium of oil paint, offering further proof of the King’s great wealth and power. The painting measures only 32 ½ by 29 inches, but the King’s own massive form coveys a nearly overpowering sense of Henry’s commanding personality. Even the style of his doublet, with its puffed sleeves and overall cutwork, suggests a physical presence ready to burst out of its confines.
Henry was part of the first generation of truly national European monarchs after the political fragmentation of the Middle Ages. Today’s headlines confirm the difficulty of holding together a newly forged nation; Henry and his peers needed to use every tool at their disposal to do so. In addition to military prowess and economic strength, the physical person of the monarch became an important symbol for the kingdom itself, and needed to be costumed accordingly. One can see this in the enormous skirts and ruffled Elizabethan collars of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth, and even into the eighteenth century in the elaborate hairstyles and high shoes of France’s Sun King, Louis XIV.
In Henry’s case, however, he had the natural advantage of great size, even without costuming. In his youth, Henry had been an impressive athlete, but was plagued in his later years by an old hunting injury which refused to heal. Unwilling or unable to curtail his other appetites when denied the physical exercise to which he had become accustomed, Henry became increasingly obese, and his beard does little to camouflage the jowls which he had developed by 1540.
The combination of Henry’s imposing physical presence, his unprecedented political power, and capricious temperament made him a truly frightening figure; Holbein’s portrait captures this sense of menace. Absent are the quiet dignity and tenderness which humanize the artist’s other portraits of great men, but this may say more about the subject than the artist. Perhaps the most eloquent testimony for the accuracy of Holbein’s 1540 portrait of Henry VIII is that the King himself liked it.
This essay draws on factual information from The Illustrated History of Art published by Chancellor Press, Janson’s History of Art published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and A History of Western Society, 6th Edition published by Houghton Mifflin.
This striving for perfection is very evident in his portrait drawings, where he searches with his brush for just the right line for the sitter’s profile. The critical faculty in making this choice and his perception of its potency in communicating decisively the sitter’s character is a true measure of Holbein’s supreme greatness as a portrait painter. Nobody has ever surpassed the revealing profile and stance in his portraits: through their telling use, Holbein still conveys across the centuries the character and likeness of his sitters with unrivalled mastery.
Hans Holbein the Younger was born in the free imperial city of Augsburg, now in Germany, where his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, was already an important painter who ran a large and busy workshop. By 1515, Hans Holbein the Younger and his brother, Ambrosius, worked mainly as journeymen painters in Basel, Switzerland. By the age of eighteen, Hans was painting murals and religious works as well as designing stained glass windows, architectural designs and jewelry and printing books. Augsberg was an important trading center, open to economic and cultural enrichment from all over Europe. Like so many great geniuses, he had the good sense to be born into propitious circumstances and was uniquely positioned to absorb the full benefit of the wave of Renaissance Italian influence that replaced the Late Gothic artistic style with a real Northern Renaissance in the German states at the end of the fifteenth century.
As early as 1523 young Holbein produced a portrait of the humanist scholar and priest Erasmus of Rotterdam, which has been described as “at once intimate and monumental.” This talent for capturing both the personal and the public identities of his subjects was to serve Holbein well throughout his career. His work is also valued as a realistic record of 16th century clothing, hair styles and general appearance. Holbein had an ability to convincingly describe fabrics such as velvet or fur, delicate lace and beading with his careful brushwork. The result was a combined aesthetic uniquely his own.
Holbein’s travels throughout Europe in search of patronage befit the truly international artist he was becoming. After a brief stay in France he returned to Basel in 1525 to find his adopted home in the throes of the Protestant Reformation. He then traveled to England, Erasmus’ portrait in hand as a gift for the famous scholar’s good friend Thomas More, who was to become Holbein’s first patron in the British court where he quickly gained a strong reputation.
On another trip back to Basel in 1528, the artist was dismayed to witness an angry Protestant mob destroying religious art as “icons”. That same year he completed a devotional painting of the Madonna and Child with the Meyer family. The passion and sensitivity with which Holbein treated this traditionally Catholic subject, as well as subtle allusions in later work to the underlying tension between man’s mortal destiny and secular humanist philosophy suggest that his conversion may have been reluctant. It was, however, politically expedient for a painter dependent on the support of rich and powerful patrons. So, convert he did, but he also left the country. Holbein was to return to the land of his birth only once more in the course of his travels, as court painter for King Henry VIII, a position Holbein held from 1536 until he died of the plague, or an infection, in 1542.
This 1540 tempra with oil portrait of Henry VIII was commissioned in anticipation of the English King’s wedding to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Henry was at the height of his power and everything about the painting is meant to impress: the rigidly immobile, frontal pose communicates the absolute power of the King, his left hand rests on the hilt of his sword with the jewels and rich fabrics, splendidly rendered in the relatively new medium of oil paint, offering further proof of the King’s great wealth and power. The painting measures only 32 ½ by 29 inches, but the King’s own massive form coveys a nearly overpowering sense of Henry’s commanding personality. Even the style of his doublet, with its puffed sleeves and overall cutwork, suggests a physical presence ready to burst out of its confines.
Henry was part of the first generation of truly national European monarchs after the political fragmentation of the Middle Ages. Today’s headlines confirm the difficulty of holding together a newly forged nation; Henry and his peers needed to use every tool at their disposal to do so. In addition to military prowess and economic strength, the physical person of the monarch became an important symbol for the kingdom itself, and needed to be costumed accordingly. One can see this in the enormous skirts and ruffled Elizabethan collars of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth, and even into the eighteenth century in the elaborate hairstyles and high shoes of France’s Sun King, Louis XIV.
In Henry’s case, however, he had the natural advantage of great size, even without costuming. In his youth, Henry had been an impressive athlete, but was plagued in his later years by an old hunting injury which refused to heal. Unwilling or unable to curtail his other appetites when denied the physical exercise to which he had become accustomed, Henry became increasingly obese, and his beard does little to camouflage the jowls which he had developed by 1540.
The combination of Henry’s imposing physical presence, his unprecedented political power, and capricious temperament made him a truly frightening figure; Holbein’s portrait captures this sense of menace. Absent are the quiet dignity and tenderness which humanize the artist’s other portraits of great men, but this may say more about the subject than the artist. Perhaps the most eloquent testimony for the accuracy of Holbein’s 1540 portrait of Henry VIII is that the King himself liked it.
This essay draws on factual information from The Illustrated History of Art published by Chancellor Press, Janson’s History of Art published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and A History of Western Society, 6th Edition published by Houghton Mifflin.
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