PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 48, SERIAL No. 48
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
ERASMUS—Holbein
DÜRER AND HOLBEIN
The Young Artist
FOUR
Hans Holbein came of an artistic family. Indeed, he is usually known as Holbein the Younger; for his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, was a painter of great ability himself. His uncle also, his mother’s father, and most of his family were painters and decorators in the city of Augsburg, Germany, where Holbein the Younger was born sometime toward the end of the fifteenth century.
No one knows exactly the year in which Holbein first opened his eyes. In those times they did not keep such an accurate record of births and deaths as they do nowadays. So, unless a man was the son of a king or some other important person, it did not matter much when he was born. Still, we are probably right when we say that Hans Holbein was born in 1497.
Those were the days of Augsburg’s prosperity. All its magnificence is gone now; but then it boasted of many merchant princes, men of distinction, and patrons of the fine arts. It was a favorite city of Emperor Maximilian himself. There was less travel at that time than now, and consequently the citizens of each town were much more closely bound together. Civic pride ran high. It was the period of the Renaissance, that great period of awakening to the appreciation of fine things in art and literature. So of course Augsburg had its Guild of Painters, and Holbein the Elder was a member of it.