German painter (b. 1497, Augsburg, d. 1543, London). Hans Holbein the Younger, born in Augsburg, was the son of a painter, Hans Holbein the Elder, and received his first artistic training from his father. Hans the Younger may have had early contacts with the Augsburg painter Hans Burgkmair the Elder. In 1515 Hans the Younger and his older brother, Ambrosius, went to Basel, where they were apprenticed to the Swiss painter Hans Herbster. Hans the Younger worked in Lucerne in 1517 and visited northern Italy in 1518-1519. On Sept. 25, 1519, Holbein was enrolled in the painters' guild of Basel, and the following year he set up his own workshop, became a citizen of Basel, and married the widow Elsbeth Schmid, who bore him four children. He painted altarpieces, portraits, and murals and made designs for woodcuts, stained glass, and jewelry. Among his patrons was Erasmus of Rotterdam, who had settled in Basel in 1521. In 1524 Holbein visited France. Holbein gave up his workshop in Basel in 1526 and went to England, armed with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, who received him warmly. Holbein quickly achieved fame and financial success. In 1528 he returned to Basel, where he bought property and received commissions from the city council, Basel publishers, Erasmus, and others. However, with iconoclastic riots instigated by fanatic Protestants, Basel hardly offered the professional security that Holbein desired. In 1532 Holbein returned to England and settled permanently in London, although he left his family in Basel, retained his Basel citizenship, and visited Basel in 1538. He was patronized especially by country gentlemen from Norfolk, German merchants from the Steel Yard in London, and King Henry VIII and his court. Holbein died in London between Oct. 7 and Nov. 29, 1543. With few exceptions, Holbein's work falls naturally into the four periods corresponding to his alternate residences in Basel and London. His earliest extant work is a tabletop with trompe l'oeil motifs (1515) painted for the Swiss standard-bearer Hans Baer. Other notable works of the first Basel period are a diptych of Burgomaster Jakob Meyer zum Hasen and his wife, Dorothea Kannengiesser (1516); a portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach (1519); an unsparingly realistic Dead Christ (1521); a Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Saints (1522); several portraits of Erasmus, of which the one in Paris (1523 or shortly after), with its accurate observation of the scholar's concentrated attitude and frail person and its beautifully balanced composition, is particularly outstanding; and woodcuts, among which the series of the Dance of Death (ca. 1521-1525, though not published until 1538) represents one of the high points of the artist's graphic oeuvre. Probably about 1520 Holbein painted an altarpiece, the Last Supper, now somewhat cut down, which is based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, and four panels with eight scenes of the Passion of Christ (possibly the shutters of the Last Supper altarpiece), which contain further reminiscences of Italian painting, particularly Andrea Mantegna, the Lombard school, and Raphael, but with lighting effects that are characteristically northern. His two portraits of Magdalena Offenburg, as Laïs of Corinth and Venus with Cupid (1526),   Related Paintings of HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger :. | The French Ambassadors | Portrait of Nikolaus Kratzer (detail) sg | Christina of Denmark, Ducchess of Milan sf | The Poet Henry Howard | Portrait of a Young Woman with a White Coif |
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Carl Schuch
(30 September 1846 - 13 September 1903) was an Austrian painter, born in Vienna, who spent most of his lifetime outside Austria, in Germany, Italy and France. He painted primarily still lifes and landscapes. During the period 1882-94 he was based in Paris, where he was greatly impressed by the work of Claude Monet whom he described as "the Rembrandt of plein-air painting" although he was attracted most of all to Rembrandt and the artists of the Barbizon school. In 1884 and 1885 he spent the summer months in the Netherlands, studying the Dutch old masters as well as the contemporary painters of the Hague School, and filling notebooks with detailed descriptions of the colors he observed in paintings that he admired. Of all the artists belonging to the circle around Wilhelm Leibl (called the Leibl-Kreis), Schuch was the most devoted to color. His work marks the transition from the realist tradition to the modern movement in Vienna, esthetically, however, it is far from contemporary trends, and from its means and ends, comparable to Paul Cezanne (Gottfried Boehm, referring to Arnold Gehlen).
Johann Jakob Meyer
b Winterthur, 7 Oct 1763; d Aussersihl, Schwyz, 10 April 1830,Swiss painter and engraver. He studied under Johann Rudolf Schellenburg in Winterthur and then, in 1778, with Heinrich Rieter (1751-1818) in Berne, where he was also influenced by the topographical landscapes of Johann Ludwig Aberli. He was adept at executing such sharply detailed engravings of Swiss cities as View of Lucerne (c. 1790; e.g. Lucerne, Zentbib.), which he sold to tourists. In 1802 he published an important series of views of Switzerland, which were widely circulated. His skill as a painter of animals was sometimes combined with his rendering of the landscape, as in View of the Lake of Bienne (c. 1800; Winterthur, Kstmus.). In 1807 he taught drawing in Basle and in 1814 was active in the area around Lake Constance. His paintings are often characterized by warm colours and frequently capture the atmosphere of late afternoon, as in Murg on the Lake of Walen (c. 1820; St Gall, Kstmus.). Many of his landscapes are straightforward depictions of the Swiss countryside, stressing the romantic nature of the scene, as in View of the Area of Bex (1821; Winterthur, Kstmus.). He painted in Zurich in 1827 and was known to have travelled to Munich and Dresden. His works are important visual documents of an image of the pastoral countryside frequently propagated by Swiss artists in accordance with the philosophical ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Bernardino Fungai
Italian 1460-1516 Italian painter. He is recorded in 1482 as Benvenuto di Giovanni garzone at work on the monochrome frescoes decorating the drum of the cupola of Siena Cathedral. Most scholars have accepted Benvenuto as Fungai teacher but stress the greater influence of Matteo di Giovanni; other proposals have included Giovanni di Paolo and, following the reattribution of paintings traditionally ascribed to Giacomo Pacchiarotti, Pietro Orioli. Fungai depended heavily on the preceding generation of Sienese painters and was considerably influenced by the contemporary activity of Pietro Perugino, Luca Signorelli and Bernardino Pinturicchio in and around Siena. His works are characterized by the docility of the figures, a keen decorative sensibility in the use of colour and the treatment of drapery and landscape, and a pleasantly engaging narrative skill. Although identification of works from his early career is problematic, a sizeable oeuvre has been ascribed on the basis of a signed and dated altarpiece executed for S Niccole al Carmine depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned with SS Sebastian, Jerome, Nicholas and Anthony of Padua (1512; Siena, Pin. N.).