Lines of beauty

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543) needs no introduction: his vision of kingship in the person of Henry VIII has become part of our national identity, despite Holbein himself being a German whose first taste of success was in Basel. It’s a strange fact that, although endowed with a robust tradition of drawing and linear ornament in England, our great painters tended to be incomers from the Continent, at least until the time of Hogarth. Holbein was the first of these, wafted to Britain on trade winds and the all-pervading breeze of the Renaissance. In search of patronage, he found Sir Thomas More, friend of his first patron the great humanist thinker Erasmus, and then on his second trip to this country (1532–43) was taken up by the king. The series of court portrait drawings and paintings which resulted from this association are the extraordinary achievement on which Holbein’s reputation rests today.