Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Hans Holbein: The Artist in a Changing World > Status Update
Charlie Fenton
is on page 136 of 288
‘By 1535 or 1536 at the latest, Henry appointed Holbein as one of his court painters, although the exact date cannot be pinpointed because of missing records. As Holbein had been hoping for, the appointment gave him a reliable income as well as an acknowledged status, and he spent most of the last part of his life in a very different context from that of Basel, mostly producing portraits (and some other works)’
— Jan 14, 2021 03:42PM
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Charlie’s Previous Updates
Charlie Fenton
is on page 183 of 288
‘In England he worked for a range of clients of different social means, but even in those paintings made for sitters with fewer financial resources, the compromise was not on artistic quality, but on the material aspects of value: size of panel (that is, degree of effort) and materials (amount and expense of pigments).’
— Jan 18, 2021 02:30AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 96 of 288
‘While a significant proportion of Holbein the Younger’s earliest works are religious in character and fulfil many of the same roles as the paintings made by his father, the swift advance of Protestantism in Basel during the 1520s disrupted that form of artistic patronage. Those who became Protestant, particularly those who were more extreme than Luther, tended to reject religious images altogether’
— Jan 13, 2021 10:41AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 96 of 288
‘Religious imagery was absolutely central to the career of Holbein’s father, Hans Holbein the Elder: although he did paint some portraits and other secular images, the great majority of his work consisted of altarpieces, devotional panels and other forms of religious imagery like epitaphs and votive paintings. That changed dramatically in the career of his son.’
— Jan 13, 2021 10:41AM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 20 of 288
‘No documentation confirms the elder Holbein’s training of his sons, but technically and conceptually their earliest work shows close affiliation with his. Moreover, it seems natural to infer from the two sets of early portraits the father’s pride in (and affection for) his sons.’
— Jan 11, 2021 12:52PM
Charlie Fenton
is on page 11 of 288
‘will tackle head-on the ways in which we interpret Holbein’s surviving work, both as material products of physical making, and as signs of authorial intent that we use to construct a historical persona. The goal is not to discard the aim of better understanding Holbein and his art, but to recognize the inevitable distance between whatever understanding we can arrive at today given the limited information’
— Jan 11, 2021 12:39PM
