Hans Holbein the Younger, Volume 1 (of 2) by Arthur B. Chamberlain

HANS HOLBEIN THE ELDER AND HIS FAMILY The Holbein family in Switzerland and South Germany—Michel Holbein, the leather-dresser—Hans Holbein the Elder, citizen of Augsburg—His brother Sigmund, and his two sons, Ambrosius and Hans—The art of Hans Holbein the Elder and his position in the German School of painting—His principal pictures—Work in Ulm and Frankfurt—Paintings for the Convent of St. Catherine in Augsburg—Work for the Church of St. Moritz—Monetary difficulties—The St. Sebastian altar-piece—the “Fountain of Life” at Lisbon—His silver-point portrait drawings—His death at Isenheim. DURING the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the name of Holbein was not uncommon in various parts of Southern Germany and Switzerland. At Ravensburg, near Lake Constance, a family of that name had settled as paper manufacturers, their trade-mark being a bull’s head, which was also used by Hans Holbein in his coat of arms. The name is also found in the records of the town of Grünstadt, in Rhenish Bavaria, during the same centuries; while for a still longer period members of a Holbein family were living in Basel, where they had a house called “Zum Papst” in the Gerbergasse. It was from this branch that the painter was in all probability descended,[1] and it is also possible that the Basel and Ravensburg Holbeins were connected. This relationship between the three branches may have been one of the reasons which induced the youthful Hans to turn his face towards Switzerland when he finally left Augsburg, the city of his birth. In Augsburg itself the first reference to a burgher bearing the name of Holbein occurs in the middle of the fifteenth century. In 1448 a certain Michel Holbein, who had been living at Oberschönefeld, in the near neighbourhood, moved into Augsburg, and settled there permanently. In the first entry in the records in which his name occurs he is called “Michel von Schönenfeld,” but in 1454 his surname is given as “Holbain,” this being the common spelling of the name in Augsburg at that time, or, less frequently, “Holpain.” This Michel Holbein, who came from Oberschönefeld, and died in Augsburg about 1497, and at one time was regarded as the father of Hans Holbein the Elder, is no longer considered to be identical with the latter, who was also named Michel and was a leather-dresser by trade. From 1464 to 1475 the last named was living in a house of his own, No. 472A in the Vorderer Lech, which is spoken of as “Michel Holbains Hus,” or “Domus Michel Holbains.” After 1475 he changed his dwelling more than once, and his several removals can be traced from the rate-books, in which his addresses at various dates are given as “Salta zum Schlechtenbad,” “Vom Bilgrimhaus,” “Vom Nagengast,” “In der Prediger Garten,” and so on. All these places were in the Vorderer and Mittlerer Lech, in that part of the city to the east of the Maximilianstrasse known as the Diepold, in the neighbourhood of the Lech canals and streams, by which Augsburg is watered, along the banks of which most of the smaller trades of the city were carried on and the workshops of the artificers and metal-workers were situated. In the years 1479, 1481, and 1482 Michel Holbein was absent from Augsburg, and appears to have left his wife behind him, for in 1481 it is noted against her in the rate-book that her husband was not with her (“Ihr Mann nicht bei ihr”). Michel Holbein died probably about the year 1484.[2] His widow, whose name first occurs in the town records in 1469, continued to move from house to house, her addresses being given as “in der Strasse Am Judenberg,” “Von Sant Anthonino,” “Vom Diepolt,” and beyond the Sträfinger Gate. [Sidenote: HANS HOLBEIN THE ELDER] The name of “Hanns Holbain” first appears in the records in the year