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(1) Hans Holbein (i)
(b Augsburg, ?1460–65; d 1534). Painter and draughtsman.
The date of his birth has been estimated from his earliest signed painting, the Death of the Virgin (Budapest, Mus. F.A.), which is dated 148(?). His earliest surviving dated altarpiece is the St Afra Altarpiece, produced for the church of SS Ulrich and Afra, Augsburg (1490; Eichstätt, Bischöf. Pal.; Basle, Kstmus.). In 1493 he was recorded, buying a house in Augsburg, as ‘Hans Holbein the painter, citizen of Ulm’; he was then working in Ulm with the sculptor Michel Erhart on the Weingartner Altarpiece, depicting scenes from the Life of the Virgin, for the chapel of the Virgin in the Benedictine monastery at Weingarten (1493; panels, Augsburg Cathedral; carvings untraced); here the style of the paintings reveals the influence of the Netherlandish style of Rogier van der Weyden. By this date, however, Holbein had already developed stylistic traits of his own: the ability to depict individual facial characteristics, the clear and symmetrical organization of his figures within the available space (here placing them within various architectural structures, which serve both to delineate the subsidiary scenes and to unify the separate panels of the altarpiece) and the use of warm, glowing colour.
Part of the Holbein family
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