Hans Holbein the Younger: From Basel to the Tudor Court (Part 1)

How did Hans Holbein become court painter to Henry VIII, one of the most notorious monarchs in British history? Without his stunning portraits would the Tudor period burn so brightly in the imagination? Join Alastair and James to find out how Holbein, an artist from a small town in southern Germany ended up kickstarting the story of British art. If you want to see the artworks discussed in this episode you can switch on video in your podcast app at any time. Artworks in this episode include: Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533, The National Gallery, London Hans Holbein the Younger, Self Portrait, c.1542-43, Uffizi Gallery, Florence Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1523, The National Gallery, London Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Sir Thomas More, 1527, Frick Collection, New York Hans Holbein the Younger, Study for a Portrait of Thomas More’s Family, c. 1527, Kunstmuseum, Basel To see images of the artworks in this episode go to heni.com/storiesofart or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Ambassadors and Holbein's Legacy 00:04:36 Early Life in Augsburg: A Family of Artists 00:09:54 Moving to Basel 00:12:03 Holbein the Man: Brawls and Beer 00:16:08 The Erasmus Portraits: A Career-Defining Commission 00:26:48 Journey to England: From Basel to the Tudor Court 00:30:13 Tudor England: A Provincial Power with Growing Ambitions 00:34:13 Sir Thomas More: Holbein's First Great English Patron 00:41:12 The Greenwich Revels 00:46:47 Departure from England: An Unfinished Story

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Alastair Sooke?

  Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alastair Sooke.

• 0:04James Fox?

  And I'm James Fox.

• 0:09Alastair Sooke?

  A pair of Frenchmen, including one dandyish fellow in a gorgeous pink doublet and a furlong cloak, stand facing the viewer on either side of a set of shelves, covered with all manner of objects: astronomical instruments, a globe, a musical score, and a lute with a broken string. Below, a strange bone-gray form stretches across the foreground, unreadable to the uninitiated, the true meaning of which is revealed only to those in the know. So that, James, that is my extremely brief description of perhaps the most famous painting, definitely the greatest painting, most complex painting, by the subject of this,

• 0:51Alastair Sooke?

  the first of our two-part miniseries on the great German artist and chronicler of the Tudor court, Hans Holbein the Younger. Where's he sit in the history of art for you?

• 1:01James Fox?

  Well, Alastair, for me, he doesn't sit. He stands, legs astride a colossus. He's one of the great artists, I think, of the Renaissance. He's one of the finest portraitists of all time. I actually think Holbein is arguably, I don't know what you think, the most influential, the most important figure in the history of British art. For two reasons. I think, first of all, he is responsible for introducing the serious portrait painting as we know it to this country. And second, he was the man who bore witness to and pictured this really pivotal period in British history, the reign of Henry VIII. So I think our understanding of that period in our history would be immeasurably poorer without him.

• 1:46Alastair Sooke?

  I completely agree. I think he stands at the beginning of this tradition of British art. In a sense, he's the father of British art. He's the guy who brings the Renaissance to this country in all sorts of ways. And I think he has totally defined for all of us how we think about Henry VIII, as you say, but also that wider Tudor court. Because his portraits, and lots of them, survive. As well as lots of these stunning gorgeous preparatory drawings are unbelievably good. He was just, I mean, just, this sounds like a beginning with quite a basic point, but he was so skillful. And the realism of his portraiture, and it's not just that he creates a good likeness, he gives a sense of, if you like, the workings of the interior

• 2:30Alastair Sooke?

  lives, of these people who lived half a millennium ago, which is, I think, an extraordinary feat. Yeah, and it makes you think, why are the Tudors so famous today? Why does everyone, why do they feel so vivid? I think it's partly, largely because of Hans Holbein. And he doesn't totally flatter. So there's a bloodthirsty element, if you like, to all of those wranglings at the Tudor court, which have been dramatized so extensively and excitingly by Hilary Mantel and her series of novels, and then the BBC adaptations of those books, which are really good, of course. But you do get a sense in some of the pictures of that, that sort of phrase of warts and all, if you like. So he's not

• 3:11Alastair Sooke?

  letting people entirely off the hook, even though they're paying for his living, if you like. There's also, should probably say at the outset, there's, there's a new book that's just come out, which I think is brilliant. I really recommend it. It's, it's the first, apparently scholarly biography of Holbein for a century by a woman called Elizabeth Goldring, and it's full of fascinating information. The thing that always gets me about Holbein is that he's seen as the head of the British tradition, British art history, but of course, he's not British at all. And I think it's quite fascinating from the off to kind of remember, he wasn't born here, he wasn't, although he lived for a long time in London, he actually comes from what is now southern Germany. So, shall we get stuck in? Let's get started.

• 3:55Alastair Sooke?

  So this is the first of two episodes on the life and work of Hans Holbein the Younger.

• 4:09James Fox?

  Alastair, there's a Chinese proverb, isn't there, that says, "May you live in interesting times." Holbein lived in extremely interesting times. Short life, died in his mid 40s, about our age. And yet, what he lived through. He lived through the Renaissance, he lived through the Reformation, he lived through the rise of the printed book. He met Erasmus, he met Henry VIII in his pomp. Quite extraordinary. But what do we know about the world in which he grew up in?

• 4:36Alastair Sooke?

  I think, conventionally, the word that's used to describe that period is tumultuous. But he doesn't come from what you might think of as this great churning vortex of tumult. He's actually born in a city called Augsburg, in what's now southern Germany, at the end of the 15th century, 1497, perhaps 1498. And Augsburg is, it's not an insignificant place. It has a significant population, probably around 20,000 people, something like that. Maybe it's growing at the turn of the 16th century, up to 30,000. And it's right at the heart of this huge entity called the Holy Roman Empire, which is a hugely powerful political force in Europe at this moment.

• 5:21Alastair Sooke?

  It's a confederation of states. And part of the way that it works is you have these so-called free imperial cities, which are essentially self-governing. Augsburg is one of them. It's an important commercial centre. It's also located just north of the Alps, so it does have some connection with everything that's happening in Italy at this time, where the Renaissance is really in full flow and a lot of ideas are bleeding across, artists are coming. And we know that when Holbein's born, there were roundabout, and I think this is quite significant, given that it's a huge population, there are bigger German-speaking cities, Nuremberg and Cologne, so it is...

• 6:01Alastair Sooke?

  Significant, but there are fifty painters roughly who are active in the city at that moment. A lot of workshops, there's an appetite, there's the wealth and an appetite to be commissioning painting and other types of fine and decorative arts. And one of these workshops is actually run by Holbein's father, who somewhat confusingly is also known as Hans. So we have a Hans Holbein the Younger we've been talking about, but his dad, Hans Holbein the Elder, runs this workshop and really he's actually a very successful painter. He specialises in religious pictures, sacred works of art.

• 6:40James Fox?

  And I imagine that Hans Holbein the Elder's children, so it's Hans Holbein the Younger, who's the subject of this podcast, and his brother Ambrosius, I imagine as children they would spend lots of time in that workshop, would be preparing pigments, preparing canvases, doing a little bit of odd job work around the workshop. And I imagine they would have expected that they would follow their father's footsteps in that workshop in Augsburg.

• 7:04Alastair Sooke?

  I think it's a really safe assumption that Holbein the Younger is trained in the workshop of his father. And he's learning how to draw, how to paint, as you say, how to grind and mix up and use pigments. He is also probably being sent on various errands, so he's interacting with lots of the other local artists and craftsmen with whom Hans Holbein the Elder is himself collaborating. And so this is his artistic education. And it's clear that very quickly he is seen as a very special talent, because there is this religious picture which Hans Holbein the Elder paints, in which the dad includes a self-portrait and portraits of his two sons.

• 7:48Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's an in-joke for the family, it's not like people would know who these people were, but it clearly, we know that they are these portraits. And The nuts and bolts of it are that the dad in this picture is pointing almost in awe at this young boy in front of him, not the older brother, but Hans, as if to say, this is the future of my workshop, this is the guy who's really got the talent. I'm quite good, but check out this guy, my son. He's a very proud dad. It's quite sweet.

• 8:15James Fox?

  It's lovely, but things begin to go wrong because in around 1510, when Hans Holbein the Younger is just, what, 13 years old or so, for reasons that we don't fully understand, Alastair, his father's workshop begins to fall to pieces. The income dries up, people begin to leave. The whole thing crumbles around him. There's even a report that his father is sued by his butcher, which is a very German state of affairs, isn't it? But the whole thing goes, and those boys, Hans Holbein the Younger and his brother, they need to leave. They need to move to a different city and start a career in a different place.

• 8:57Alastair Sooke?

  I think you've got different things going on here. So one is that it might be as simple as just fashions change in the art world. Hans the Elder, he specialises in a certain type of painting, and the way he's painting is starting perhaps to seem old fashioned. But you've also alluded to this much bigger, broader, wider historical context of the nascent Reformation that's starting to really gather pace in Europe at this time. And so all of the reformers who have various issues with the Catholic Church, they're starting to argue that actually all of these religious pictures, which we find in altarpieces and decorating churches across Europe, they're somehow idolatrous. They're getting in the way of one's relationship with God.

• 9:40Alastair Sooke?

  And consequently, there is this new zeitgeist feel, which is perhaps, it doesn't happen overnight, but perhaps may account for that downturn in part in fortunes in Hans Holbein the Elder's workshop.

• 9:54James Fox?

  So around 1515, Hans Holbein and his brother leave Augsburg. They leave their father, they leave their family home, and they settle in the Swiss city. Of Basel, and this will prove a very significant turning point in Hans Holbein's career, won't it?

• 10:12Alastair Sooke?

  Well, there is this other element to it where there's this concept, which I think I'm going to butcher the German pronunciation, but I believe the word is something like Wunderjahre, which means wandering years.

• 10:24James Fox?

  It was the throaty, the throaty way you said it was.

• 10:26Alastair Sooke?

  You carried it off, did it?

• 10:28James Fox?

  Very good.

• 10:28Alastair Sooke?

  Um, thank you very much. And I think I like this idea because if you're a young German artist in this period, it would be natural to go through these wandering years. It's almost like a sort of, you've done your apprenticeship, but it's a bit of a gap year, if you like. And it just so happens that Holbein and his brother choose to spend their gap year, not in Thailand or South East Asia, but in Basel, in, in, in this Swiss city, which is a few hundred miles away. And Basel is crucial, as you've said, to his career. It's quite possible that he wasn't even intending to spend time there permanently. But he arrives there and the big thing to know about Basel is that it's, it's smaller than Augsburg, but it's a university city.

• 11:12Alastair Sooke?

  And as a result, there's this flourishing book printing industry, which very quickly Hans, the younger, is working for. And so there's this demand. I think within the city itself, it's probably only about 10,000 inhabitants, something like that. But there were 70 printing presses by the time that Holbein. I mean, it's extraordinary. It seems bizarre, but um, by the time that Holbein and his brother turn up. So he's often at the beginning, working by contributing, say, designs for title pages. And it turns out that he's really good at them because, like you say, he's this Renaissance man. It's the Renaissance moment within Europe. And he is noticing and encountering what we think of as Renaissance design motifs, which he's incorporating into the title pages and it's starting to win him fame. So by 1521,

• 11:57Alastair Sooke?

  his title pages, we know, are already being recognised and appreciated as far away as England, very early kind of moment. Before we move on in the story, Alistair, do you have a sense, and I've never had this sense really in all the time I've been looking at Holbein. Do you have a sense of his character, what kind of personality he is? He's a very mysterious figure. He gets married in 1519, doesn't he, shortly after arriving in Basel? There's some evidence that he was fined or something for brawling and fighting in Basel, but do we know, do you have a, a handle on what kind of person he was at all? I think when you start looking into Holbein's life, you start to realise that, yes, you can flesh out a bit of a picture.

• 12:37Alastair Sooke?

  And perhaps we're still initially too dictated by the refinement, the polish of his Tudor portraits of real nobility often, not always, but the Tudor elite that he paints later. And as a result, you might think of him in a certain way. But it kind of turns out that he's a bit more down to earth than that. There's one self-portrait we know about, but this is jumping around. It dates from the very end of his life. It's in the Offizi in Florence. And he doesn't look, well, he's quite heavy featured. He has this bulbous nose. He looks like he's a very practical man. And without giving the game away,

• 13:21Alastair Sooke?

  he, it turns out, was probably quite successful with women. And when you look at the self-portrait, it's a little bit of a surprise that he is. He seems like this totally ridiculously unlikely Lothario. But yes, there are these flashes from his youth, these moments in the records where you can start to piece together a slightly different feel to him. So you've mentioned there is this incident. I think it actually takes place in a different city, in Lucerne, where he's based for a short period in the sort of Basel years, around about 1517, 18. And a character called Holbein is fined for brawling in the street. He also, and you have to think about Basel,

• 14:00Alastair Sooke?

  it's an interesting moment in Basel's history because you have this emerging class who are not necessarily patricians, but increasingly mercantile. And the city is organised in terms of its society according to many, many guilds. And eventually Holbein does become a member of one of these guilds. They have their own hierarchy. Each guild presumably has its headquarters where people hang out. They're a social thing as much as a sort of professional development thing. And there is this moment in 1520 when Holbein is elected as the Stubenmeister.

• 14:31James Fox?

  That's a good title, isn't it?

• 14:33Alastair Sooke?

  It's brilliant. I mean, it's apparently, it means chamber master, a chamber master. But the idea is that essentially he's in charge of. Keeping the guild's drinking rooms well stocked.

• 14:43James Fox?

  Again, a very good job.

• 14:44Alastair Sooke?

  It's a brilliant job. And it's something that sort of comes back throughout his life, where you get these little moments where later in England, he's hanging out with people who seem to like a drink. And there's this sense that he enjoys his beer. He enjoys a little bit, the odd sort of possibly not unrelated brawl in the streets.

• 15:03Alastair Sooke?

  He has a way with the ladies. There's a slightly different feel to Holbein than perhaps we might think. Though you could say, on the other hand, it feels quite appropriate, given that he's the man, Holbein is the man who goes on to immortalise the great Bluebeard, Henry VIII, that he himself has this slightly womanising, adulterous and possibly slightly aggressive streak. But yeah, he's a sociable guy. And you've mentioned the marriage. The woman he marries is called Elspeth. Elspeth was a widow. She was previously married to a tanner. She has a son called Fritz. So suddenly Holbein has this family.

• 15:37James Fox?

  So he's been in Basel at this stage, what, for three years or so? Gets married, I suppose, beginning to establish his early career at this point. He's in his early twenties still. It's amazing how much life they can squeeze into a few years back in those days. But does he start to make, I mean, is the early, around that time of his marriage, fifteen nineteen onwards through into the early fifteen twenties in Basel, that he begins to make some of his first, I suppose, really famous and celebrated works, doesn't he?

• 16:08Alastair Sooke?

  He does indeed. And we should really talk about, and perhaps concentrate for a moment on one, because it's seen as the great pivot, the turning point in his career. And there are a few versions of this, but it's essentially, he was commissioned to make a portrait of the most famous humanist intellectual of the day, a man called Erasmus of Rotterdam, who'd lived on and off in Basel for several years. He'd also spent time earlier in his career in England. And around about early fifteen twenties, fifteen twenty three, Holbein makes several portraits of him. And there's one that I think we should concentrate on, because he has these two different approaches. To portraying Erasmus.

• 16:50James Fox?

  One thing I'd add to that is I it's he should never have really even got the commission, Alastair.

• 16:56Alastair Sooke?

  Well, no, just explain why.

• 16:57James Fox?

  Well, because a few years earlier in fifteen twenty, Erasmus had asked Albrecht Dürer, who at that point was a far more established figure and the the leading figure in Northern European art at the time, to produce some portraits for him. And Dürer had gone over, he'd done some sittings, he'd done some drawings, but three years had passed, and Dürer had delivered nothing. And I think Erasmus started to get very frustrated, and so he turns to Holbein. And of course, Holbein's a very good choice. He's younger, he's probably much cheaper than Dürer, and he's his neighbour. He lives, you know, a few streets away in Basel, and Erasmus was the was the master micromanager. So he thought, well, I can completely control how these paintings are going to turn out.

• 17:38James Fox?

  So I think had Dürer delivered on what he'd promised, I think Holbein would have never got that that opportunity. And it's really interesting to think about what longer term consequences that would have had. And you're right, I mean, Erasmus at the time was the most famous intellectual in Europe. He was a kind of, I don't know, a public intellectual. He was a sort of Noam Chomsky or a Jordan Peterson, depending on your political persuasions.

• 18:02Alastair Sooke?

  But I mean, on that point, I find it retrospectively, five hundred years later, so bizarre that the key thing that makes Holbein's name intellectually is his portrait of the equivalent of a Jordan Peterson or a Noam Chomsky.

• 18:16James Fox?

  It is a massive, because he's so influential, Erasmus, all over Europe and so well connected, not just with other intellectuals but with rulers. I think this this commission is an absolute game changer for Holbein. Shall we talk about the the the portraits themselves? Because there's one particular portrait in the National Gallery, which is one of my favourite portraits. Can you tell us a little bit about this wonderful picture that Holbein makes for Erasmus in fifteen twenty three?

• 18:45Alastair Sooke?

  So Holbein is tasked with coming up with a portrait of Erasmus, and in the end, presumably, it goes quite well. We know of different types, so Erasmus has said, OK, I want more than one. And in one of the types, he's seen in Profile writing, but in the one that you've just mentioned that we're going to talk about now that's in the National Gallery, you see a man wearing this rather fine black fur-lined cloak and a black cap, who's sitting in three-quarters face, so you can see most of his face, three-quarters face, and he's sitting in some sort of interior. Behind him, there's this very big classical column.

• 19:24James Fox?

  I think unlikely that would have been right next to him in his studio. Don't you think that's a little bit of artifice going on?

• 19:29Alastair Sooke?

  It is hugely. I mean, it looks like something far, far grander than just a simple writing study. But it gives a sense of his, what, his ambitions, a sense of his learning, the fact that to him, classical antiquity is clearly very important, he's drawing upon it. And he has beneath him, and his hands, very delicately, his fingers are touching the top of a book, a red leather-bound volume, which is inscribed. And are you, how's your, I think, is it in Greek? Let me have a little look.

• 19:56James Fox?

  It's in Greek. Actually, I've got a bit of Greek blood myself, I can translate this. It says in English, "The labors of Hercules." And I think this is an allusion to the fact he did previously an edition of the works of St. Jerome, and it was a very, very difficult job. And he said, you know, this was a Herculean task to get this done. So it's obviously an allusion to the enormous ambition and success of his scholarly work.

• 20:24Alastair Sooke?

  He's advertising what he's done, in a sense, isn't he? I mean, this is, he's clearly talking to Holbein, and between them, they're coming up with something that Erasmus is thinking. This is a way of furthering my own reputation. I mean, at this point, Holbein's unknown outside Basel. Erasmus is probably aware of Holbein's work from having seen some of those early portraits, and also seen his work for the book-printing industry with which Erasmus was clearly very involved as well. But this is all about Erasmus's own self-image. And so, one of the things that's fascinating about it is to see the beginnings of this tradition in portraiture, where an artist and a patron are collaborating together to create a world in which you're saying, okay, this is what I'm about. So Erasmus...

• 21:09Alastair Sooke?

  Is about hard work, he's about, you know, scholarship, erudition, he's about antiquity. And in the background, you have this even more objects, which of course becomes such a Holbein treat.

• 21:19James Fox?

  Yes.

• 21:20Alastair Sooke?

  There's this, there's a green curtain along a curtain rail, which is half drawn. And behind that, there's another area in the interior with a shelf on the wall. And there are some books, I think, is that an empty glass wine carafe?

• 21:34James Fox?

  He's finished it, hasn't he, obviously?

• 21:36Alastair Sooke?

  He looks remarkably sober in, maybe, maybe it's just a daze, he's sort of.

• 21:41James Fox?

  If you're undertaking a labour of Hercules, Alistair, you need to, you need to fill your, fill your boots before you start. You need a good drink. The really interesting thing up there at the top, where those, the various objects, is there is a book there with a Latin couplet. And this couplet, if you translate it into English, and this is a real mystery to me, it says, "I am Johannes Holbein, whom it is easier to denigrate than to emulate." What do you think that's all about?

• 22:08Alastair Sooke?

  What I think is going on there is that probably young Hans, or Johannes, when he pitches up in Basel, he's not from round those parts. And there are lots of people who are local artists in the guilds, who are a bit like, who is this shit hot talented guy who's suddenly coming into the city and hoovering up all of the commissions? I think he even does one of those very early portraits, the one of the mayor. He may not yet be an official member of a guild, which is shock horror, that's a terrible thing. It was quite stratified, the way you could work as an artist in those days. But from the off, a bit like that earlier moment where his dad is signalling in the painting, this guy's got an exceptional talent.

• 22:53Alastair Sooke?

  From the off, Hans Holbein the younger is seen as someone who's really very special and different rules apply. As a result, I think he's attracting a bit of opprobrium. There's quite a lot of sense of competition, rivalry, presumably with local artists and artisans. There is this. Little anecdote, have you come across this, I mean, you might be able to help me untangle it, where there is a slander case, which dates from these years in Basel, where someone is accused of slandering someone else by saying that that other person has been spending too much time with these, quote, impotent Swabians.

• 23:33James Fox?

  Oh, yes, exactly, and I think there is, I do vaguely recall that, and is there a sense that because he's an outsider, and this is something that you come across throughout this period, and Holbein will encounter this later on in his life, that when you move to another country, there is an inherent hostility to an outsider coming in, artists coming and stealing your jobs.

• 23:56Alastair Sooke?

  And I think Algsberg is part of this area of Swabia, as it was known, in, I guess, southern Germany, so there's this sense that people are aware of the Holbein bros coming in, and it's like, they start badmouthing them and accusing them, weirdly, of being impotent, which I suppose is just a classic insult, sort of, you know, time honoured. But to come back to the Erasmus portrait, it's, one of the things that I think is really interesting is to tie it together with the Basel book printing industry context, because Erasmus doesn't just commission one of these portraits, he's commissioning more than one, and actually later in his life, they get updated and changed, and there's a big market for them, and he starts to send them to people.

• 24:37Alastair Sooke?

  So there's a story that he sends Holbein with one of these portraits of Erasmus to the French court, and that's a little, another interesting sliding doors moment, because you think before he's really arrived and settled in England, Holbein seems to be pursuing work in the French court, and there could be this whole other world in which he'd been taken on there. But there's a very interesting letter from one of Erasmus's friends in England, to whom he does send one of these portraits, a guy called William Werram, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the idea is that Erasmus is sending his portrait to his friends, so that he, the friend, can have, quote, "a little piece of Erasmus, in case God summons him away, i.e. he dies." So there's this sense from the off, that Holbein's portraits are enormously vivid

• 25:22Alastair Sooke?

  and lifelike, so much so that they could almost be a stand-in, and they become this... Part of a sort of exchange between important elite friends within Europe at the time. And I love to tie it with the book printing thing. This idea that suddenly here you are in this world of printing and promulgating ideas in a rapid way that hadn't happened before. And you can do it in portraiture as well by creating different variants. You can send them out to different people and that way you're messaging and communicating in a way that feels perhaps it wouldn't have been impossible to even to conceive of that as an idea before the printing press.

• 26:01James Fox?

  Yeah, I don't know about you, Alistair, but I am constantly sending portraits of myself to everyone I know. It's just the thing to do, isn't it?

• 26:07Alastair Sooke?

  I've seen your social media feed.

• 26:09James Fox?

  But so this one of the, I mean, this is a breakthrough work. You've mentioned it already, but you know, every successful artist has some kind of breakthrough work, you know, Michelangelo was, it was David, Damien Hirst, it was the shark, Quentin Tarantino was reservoir dogs. Holbein, this is the breakthrough work. This is the turning point, isn't it? And I think that had he not got that commission from Erasmus, I think his career would have unfolded very, very differently.

• 26:36Alastair Sooke?

  Well, certainly because Erasmus is really well connected and he spent time in England. And it's essentially through Erasmus and because of Erasmus that Holbein does come to England. So this idea emerges towards the end of this Basel period in the 1520s that Holbein might seek his fortune elsewhere. And one option is to travel to England where it's possible that there aren't at that time established court painters. And maybe he's thinking if he can get an in there, he might find some really lucrative work, working at the Tudor court. But he needs an in and it's Erasmus who provides him with that in.

• 27:17James Fox?

  And so in August 1526, so almost 500 years ago, Holbein makes this decision to leave Basel and to travel to England.

• 27:25Alastair Sooke?

  And so after the break, we're going to find out how he gets on in England.

• 27:37Alastair Sooke?

  A reminder that if you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time.

• 27:50Alastair Sooke?

  Welcome back. It's 1526 and Hans Holbein, the son of a painter from what's now southern Germany, has made a name for himself in the Swiss university city of Basel and he's made the momentous decision to leave the city and to travel to England.

• 28:06James Fox?

  Elizabeth Goldring, in her biography, writes really wonderfully about the kind of journey that he made, because you couldn't just jump on the Eurostar back then. And so what he would have done is he would have got a boat up the Rhine to Cologne. That's a 250 mile journey up a river. Then had to jump onto a horse and ride 150 miles through Germany and Northern Europe, sort of dodging highwaymen and bandits as he went, because there were so many robbers on the roads there. He then spent about a month in Antwerp in the autumn, which must have been lovely, because Antwerp's a great place. And then at the end of November, when the weather was probably awful, had to catch a boat across the channel to Dover or Folkestone, then got onto another horse, rode up through the Kent countryside,

• 28:48James Fox?

  got onto a boat in the Thames estuary and then sailed this boat down into London. So incredible voyage for a young man in what was probably terrible conditions.

• 28:57Alastair Sooke?

  Probably in some way quite exciting as well. He's obviously used to it because he's left Augsburg and he's made that journey already to Basel, he's travelled to other cities. But it's funny you mention the idea of having to fend off these highwaymen, these robbers, because of course when he arrives in England, he then has to deal with some potentially quite difficult, tricky characters as well. And there's this one, there is this letter which I wanted to just briefly read something from, because I think it's very instructive. This isn't something that, it's written by Erasmus. It's not written to Holbein, but it's written to someone else that Erasmus knows, who is also travelling to England in the 1520s. And this is Erasmus's characterisation of what he's going to encounter there.

• 29:40Alastair Sooke?

  So he writes, "You will meet many of the English nobles and men of learning. They will be infinitely kind to you, but be careful not to presume upon it. When they condescend, be you modest. Great men do not always mean what their faces promise, so treat them reverently as if they were gods." So there's this sense of tricksiness, I think, a sense of intrigue at court, a recognition that he, Holbein, is going to end up dealing with people who he can't necessarily take face value and trust.

• 30:13James Fox?

  Let's pause for a moment, Alastair, and describe the England into which Holbein was arriving in 1526. In the 1520s, England was a relatively minor power compared to France, compared to Spain, compared to the Holy Roman Empire. It was perceived as backward, it was perceived as provincial, it was the butt of people's jokes. I mean, Erasmus hated England. He always said the weather and the wine and the beer was awful. But it was becoming increasingly wealthy, thanks to the cloth trade. And at this point, it was being ruled by a very dynamic dynasty, the Tudors, of course, and by, at the time, a very educated, cultivated,

• 30:52James Fox?

  charismatic king in Henry VIII, before he ran to the fat. And so there was, there was lots of money, there was lots of aspiration, there was a lot of demand for status symbols and cultural objects. So it was actually a fantastic opportunity for an artist of Holbein's talent, wasn't it?

• 31:12Alastair Sooke?

  Interestingly, not yet the appetite in Tudor England for painting, for portraiture.

• 31:19James Fox?

  Well, that's really interesting.

• 31:20Alastair Sooke?

  And I think that's something that essentially Holbein is almost single-handedly responsible for and brings to these shores, if you like.

• 31:26James Fox?

  Yeah, I think there is an assumption that England is a Philistine place and that, you know, in the-

• 31:32Alastair Sooke?

  It is in some ways.

• 31:33James Fox?

  Yeah, well, but that assumption is that in the 1500s, while Italy is going through the Renaissance and people are carving wonderful sculptures from marble and painting frescoes and rediscovering antiquity, we in England are jousting and cutting each other's heads off.

• 31:47Alastair Sooke?

  Well, can I give you, I mean, there is this quite interesting, you know, the way you've been describing Tudor London, Tudor England, but also London specifically, I think, is very telling. And we do have, there's an Italian diplomat who spends time in London around this period. And his, his description of the city is, he says, "The population of London is immense, comprises many artificers, the houses are in very great number, but ugly. Half the materials are wood, nor are the streets wide. In short, I am of opinion, all things considered, that it's a very rich, as you say, populous and mercantile city, but not beautiful."

• 32:19James Fox?

  Yes, but I think that from a cultural perspective- They, I think England actually is just as cultured as Italy is and Germany is and Switzerland is. They just have different interests. So they're not particularly, as you say, interested in painting and sculpture. They don't even have a proper word for painting. They call paintings tables.

• 32:38Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, I've never quite got my head around that. Presumably it's because they're being painted on wood. They're like little panels, is that right?

• 32:43James Fox?

  I think so, or maybe it's from the French tableau or something. But there's not really an appetite for painting at this time. People aren't really commissioning them, they're not really painting them. But there are other cultural appetites. There's a great love of the decorative arts. People love gold, people love silver, people love armour, people love tapestries because also they keep these cold damp homes warm. And because frescoes wouldn't last very well in the damp climate of England. And they love spectacle, they love performance. So I think there is, there are, there is an enormous cultural vitality to England in this time. It's just not paintings and sculptures particularly.

• 33:18Alastair Sooke?

  It's very interesting to hear you say that because I feel slightly more heartened on Holbein's behalf turning up. Because I've always been struck by, there's this letter Erasmus writes to someone in Antwerp. And as you said, Holbein on his way passes through there and Erasmus is introducing Holbein to this friend and explaining who he is. And he's explaining his motivation for why he's coming. He says, the arts are not appreciated here, as in in Basel. So he's off to England in the hope of scraping together a few angels, which is a reference to the coins being used at the time, which would have had an archangel sort of on them. And I always sort of read this and thought, well, good luck, mate. I mean, the idea that you really are going to be able to suddenly, in England of all places, find this, this great patronage at this moment as, as an artist.

• 34:03Alastair Sooke?

  But you are right, because he does. And if we boil it down, he's in England by, as you say, the autumn of 1526. And really at this moment, he has one great patron, who is a very sophisticated man with a, with an enormous interest in culture and in the arts. Who is Sir Thomas More, one of the many Thomases he meets and paints over the, the subsequent years. Thomas More, he's obviously a humanist, he's well connected.

• 34:33James Fox?

  To Erasmus, he's a lawyer, he's very powerful in the court of Henry VIII, he's a very important advisor, he will go on to become even more powerful after Woolsey dies in a couple of years' time.

• 34:46Alastair Sooke?

  It is, again, it's another, it's a fascinating contrast with today, the idea that this man who is a big part of his identity, as I understand, is he, he was a scholar, he's an intellectual, but at the same time, he rises up the greasy pole and he wields enormous power at Henry's court for a period, it doesn't end well for him.

• 35:08James Fox?

  It doesn't end well for many people at this time, but, yes, at the time, Henry, Thomas More is in favour, he's bought this plot of land in Chelsea, which at the time is very rural, he's building this house, he's got orchards, he's got fields, he's got gardens, and he's trying to present himself as a European-style humanist, so for him, painting this new continental phenomenon that people are getting portraits made of each other is very appealing to him. And so Holbein arrives in 1526, possibly with a copy of a painting of Erasmus, and certainly with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Thomas More, and Erasmus says, can you help this young guy out?

• 35:51James Fox?

  And we've got actually the letter that More writes in response to that, and he writes, and I think this is really interesting, it goes back to what we've just talked about, he says, "I fear he will not find English soil as rich and fertile as he had hoped, but I shall do my best to make sure it is not completely barren." And he really, Alastair, to be fair to Thomas More, he does do his best, doesn't he?

• 36:13Alastair Sooke?

  He really does, he commissions a lot of work from Holbein, and a lot of it is portraiture. I think possibly in the same letter, but also in correspondence from More, he's referring to Holbein as a wonderful artist, so he, like everybody else who encounters this guy, recognises very swiftly that he's got... A quite special talent. He commissions a magnificent portrait of himself, Thomas More, by Holbein, which is now in the Frick in New York, in which he appears with his velvet clothes, large cloak, but also this metal collar, which signifies his political status. Before, again, interestingly, this big green curtain, green curtain's a bit of a motif

• 36:58Alastair Sooke?

  in Holbein's work.

• 36:59James Fox?

  Do you think he just had one in a box in his workshop?

• 37:02Alastair Sooke?

  It just brings it out every time. You know, charge a bit extra if you want a portrait with the green curtain inside in it. And but he also, Thomas More gets Holbein to create a big group portrait, which no longer survives. I think it was, was it, was it destroyed by fire in the 18th century? But it's an enormous picture where you've described Thomas More's estate at Chelsea, where they lived in this place that the family called the Great House. And there's, you know, it's not a nuclear family. It's a large family of 100 people, extended family members all there. And Thomas More, at the moment where he's, he's really on the up and he's riding high politically, he wants, essentially, it's family dynastic group portrait, in which he's at

• 37:47Alastair Sooke?

  the centre, his sweet old father, I always think he looks rather lovely, because we have a, although the painting has been destroyed, there is a surviving cartoon, a preparatory drawing for this picture that we can see. So we have a sense of what the composition would have been like. There's also a painted copy of the painting that was destroyed. We can be quite accurate about how it appeared. And again, in terms of the intellectual seam of our conversation, almost everyone in this picture, this group portrait, they're reading books. They're signaling their piety, there may be their prayer books, they're signaling their learning. And at the same time, he's probably through Thomas More, Holbein is starting to be known

• 38:30Alastair Sooke?

  by other members of the Tudor elite. So in this initial period after he's arrived in England, he does make some other portraits of important people, important names. But of course, at this stage, it's Unlikely he's even really met Henry. Possibly Henry visits the Chelsea estate. He may see Thomas More's work that he's commissioned by Holbein. And supposedly there is a story that when he does, he really likes it. We don't know if that's actually true. But the thing I love is finding these little flashes at this stage in Holbein's work, which throw forward to those later portraits which we'll come on to, and which are so definitive of Henry VIII. And there are a couple.

• 39:15Alastair Sooke?

  There's one is a portrait of a nobleman called Sir Henry Guildford. And he has what we later characterize as that classic Henry VIII barrel chested. He's quite big, stunts. The fascinating thing about this portrait is that we have, and we should probably talk about this as a separate aside, but we have the original drawings. And you can see that this bloke, Henry Guildford, was in reality, he was quite, he really was quite big. And actually, in the portrait, Holbein has flattered him by reducing his bulk. And he seems to go the other way with Henry much later. And then the other one, just briefly on this Henry riff, is in the group portrait of Thomas More's family. There are lots and lots of people.

• 39:58Alastair Sooke?

  As I've said, some of them are looking down, they're looking very pious, they're reading. But there's one character, I don't know if you've noticed this guy.

• 40:05James Fox?

  No, I haven't.

• 40:06Alastair Sooke?

  He is the More family household, the fool. Okay? Someone in those days, if you were a very rich family, you might employ someone who was the fool. If you remember your Shakespeare, you'd often find a Shakespearean fool, who's someone who, yes, can be funny, but also has a perhaps slightly mordant, maybe even melancholic streak. They're known for their wit and they can offer, they can speak truth to power. That's sort of the idea. And in this big group family portrait of Thomas More's clan, you see in the background, there's only one character who's standing, looks like legs astride. Square-shouldered, facing the viewer, eyeballing the viewer with a beard with this

• 40:49Alastair Sooke?

  really quite aggressive expression. And it's like, hello, this is Henry VIII, as Holbein would later depict him in the 1530s. But in this drawing, I've never quite got my head around what that link might be, or why particularly he devises this pose at that moment for the fool.

• 41:07James Fox?

  Well, he certainly reuses it with enormous power in the 1530s, doesn't he? So he's doing these portraits, so he's arrived in England 1526, he's working through 1526, early 1527 portraits for the Moors, portraits for Moors associates. But there's one other thing he does while he's in England in 1527 that might have brought him close to Henry VIII, and that is that in the spring of 1527, he is asked to work alongside a number of other artists, in fact, almost 50 other artists, to produce these decorations for this great international festival. It's a kind of a, you know, a convention between the English and the French in Greenwich.

• 41:47Alastair Sooke?

  Known as the Greenwich Revels.

• 41:49James Fox?

  The Greenwich Revels, and he's involved, and he does a number of extraordinary works for these revels. So the first thing he does, he creates this celestial ceiling, doesn't he? In a tent, I think it is. And this ceiling unfortunately doesn't survive, we don't even have drawings of it, but I think it would have been extraordinary.

• 42:08Alastair Sooke?

  So the ceiling's fascinating. One of the things I find, I mean, as you say, quite often artists at this point, they're employed, when they are employed by people at court, they would be employed to create temporary showpieces, which almost like scenery, stage props, and sadly, and it really is sad, you know, because a huge amount of effort, talent would be going into these things, they may not survive. And so you have here for the Greenwich Revels, which are all about furthering, fostering relations between the English and the French, you have this celestial ceiling. The thing I find so fascinating, you asked before about, do we have much sense of Holbein the man? Now, we know he collaborates on this ceiling with this person called Nicholas Kratzer. Now, I don't know how, I mean, I've become slightly, in thinking about Holbein ahead

• 42:53Alastair Sooke?

  of this, I'm slightly obsessed with this guy Kratzer, because I think he's a fascinating figure.

• 42:58Alastair Sooke?

  Royal astronomer, so he himself is one of these kind of humanist intellectuals. He's from Bavaria, I think he's born in Munich, and he's in England and he serves at Henry's Court. He's, you know, he's higher status, if you like, than Holbein, because he knows about the heavens. But we also have this sense that because he's a German speaker, he and Holbein seem to become quite friendly.

• 43:21James Fox?

  Yes, they do.

• 43:22Alastair Sooke?

  This first visit, so they're collaborating on this celestial ceiling. There were little glimpses in the sources where it turns out that Cratzer also likes drinking, quote, "in the German fashion."

• 43:32James Fox?

  What do you think the German fashion is?

• 43:34Alastair Sooke?

  Well, copious, just a lot of beer being consumed. And so you can imagine Cratzer and Holbein together, perhaps plotting their celestial ceiling and aided by X number of pints or whatever they'd been drinking down in the local tavern. And later on, Holbein, he does, he actually makes a portrait of Cratzer, which is now in the Louvre, which is really rather wonderful. So that's a slight aside, but again, gives a texture of Holbein the man, if you like.

• 43:58James Fox?

  So they are working together on this celestial ceiling, which gets a lot of attention. I think it's important to say that there was a great deal of hostility at this time in England to foreign artists and craftspeople coming in. In fact, 10 years earlier, there'd been the May Day riots when British artisans and workers had stormed down the streets and tried to raid, you know, German and foreign craftspeople's and artists' workshops. So there was a great deal of hostility, and I imagine that Holbein and Cratzer would have dealt with quite a lot of hostility during this project. So as I say, they're working with 40, 50 other artists, most of those artists being English.

• 44:38James Fox?

  They're being paid a lot more, so Holbein is being paid 12 times the amount of the English painters and artists working alongside him. So it must have been quite a difficult project to work on. And I wonder, Alastair, if this is when Holbein perhaps first met Henry VIII, if Henry VIII came to have a look at the decorations and thought, wow, this is fantastic.

• 45:01Alastair Sooke?

  Well, supposedly Henry was himself fascinated by astronomy. And there is this idea that in the preparation for the Greenwich Revels, because I think you mentioned it's not just this celestial ceiling, Holbein also creates this temporary painting, which is a painting of a scene, and it's commemorating a battle. It's a battle called the Battle of the Spurs. And my memory of it is that this is a battle in which basically the English beat the French. It seems bizarre, doesn't it? You're inviting the French over, this is a kind of peace conference, and so you show at the banqueting hall, you show a painting of the English beating the French in a battle. It's a real sort of dick move, if you like, from Henry, but perhaps entirely consistent with his character. So there's this idea that when they have the banquet and there's this triumphal arch,

• 45:46Alastair Sooke?

  and afterwards everyone, all the people, the French and the English, they process through the triumphal arch, and then maybe Henry sort of says to the French diplomat, hey, look back now, what can you see? And everyone turns around, and there's this battle in which it's a sort of French national humiliation. How'd you like them apples? Yeah, yeah, totally. So, but you're right, in the course of this, it's clearly, this is all about orchestrating statecraft. And that's the sort of thing which, of course, Henry's interested in. There are diplomatic repercussions to events like this. And there is this idea that Henry comes along to vet and see how the preparations are going. And perhaps that Holbein at that moment has to be on hand, because if the big man comes in and says, what an awful celestial ceiling, or you've missed out X planet, or my favourite

• 46:31Alastair Sooke?

  star, whatever it is, Holbein needs to be there to quickly do a touch-up job. So this is tantalising, because it feels like this is maybe the moment where Henry VIII and Hans Holbein the Younger are first coming face to face. And yet amazingly, he doesn't stick around, does he? He doesn't, because it's at this very moment that he decides to leave England, and he returns to Basel. So is he ever going to get back to the Tudor court? And will he survive it? All will be revealed in the next episode. But for now, that's all from us, so until next time, goodbye. Goodbye.

• 47:12Alastair Sooke?

  If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts, maybe even leave a review.