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Phaidon Colour Library
Holbein
Holbein - Every David Holbein - Every FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Rizzoli, 1980. Octavo. Paperback. Book is very good with shelf wear and sticker residue on front. Seller 422050 Art
- GenresArt
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Hans Holbein
193 books10 followersHans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497–1543) was a German-Swiss painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style, and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He is called "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, an accomplished painter of the Late Gothic school.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 31, 2015
Holbein’s portraits are startling in their verisimilitude. “Add but the voice and you have his whole self” — these words, inscribed on his portrait of Derich Born, could easily describe his whole body of work. Gaze at these portraits and they gaze back. You almost expect them to speak.
Holbein painted some of the most famous men of his time. Henry VIII, Erasmus, and Thomas More all were immortalized by his brush. He captured two of Henry’s wives as well, Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. He puts you in the room with them. His attention to detail of clothes, features, and objects is meticulous, photographic. I have spent hours studying these portraits, amazed by the likenesses that reach so powerfully across time.
The text and formatting of the book are basic. An introduction at the beginning gives a sketch of the artist’s life, and introduces the Northern Renaissance and some of its other prominent artists. After this, it presents 48 plates of Holbein’s work, painting on the right page with text describing it on the left. It’s an excellent introduction to the artist, a book to which you can return often and with which you will spend hours.
Holbein painted some of the most famous men of his time. Henry VIII, Erasmus, and Thomas More all were immortalized by his brush. He captured two of Henry’s wives as well, Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. He puts you in the room with them. His attention to detail of clothes, features, and objects is meticulous, photographic. I have spent hours studying these portraits, amazed by the likenesses that reach so powerfully across time.
The text and formatting of the book are basic. An introduction at the beginning gives a sketch of the artist’s life, and introduces the Northern Renaissance and some of its other prominent artists. After this, it presents 48 plates of Holbein’s work, painting on the right page with text describing it on the left. It’s an excellent introduction to the artist, a book to which you can return often and with which you will spend hours.
April 2, 2015
Three and a half stars. This is one of those books that contain a brief essay about an artist's life and works followed by about four dozen color plates, with brief commentary on the facing pages. It's a perfectly serviceable introduction to Holbein, and there are occasionally insights that I appreciated: "The starchy headdress Lady Eliot wears seems to have been of a design baffling even to Holbein (he had had trouble depicting Lady Guildford's in 1527)." It bothered me that the plates were not in chronological order. And there's just a juiciness to Holbein's life and times that didn't quite come across.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews