German 1497-1543 Hans Holbein Galleries Holbein always made highly detailed pencil drawings of his portrait subjects, often supplemented with ink and colored chalk. The drawings emphasize facial detail and usually did not include the hands; clothing was only indicated schematically. The outlines of these drawings were then transferred onto the support for the final painting using tiny holes in the paper through which powdered charcoal was transmitted; in later years Holbein used a kind of carbon paper. The final paintings thus had the same scale as the original drawings. Although the drawings were made as studies for paintings, they stand on their own as independent, finely wrought works of art. How many portraits have been lost can be seen from Holbein's book (nearly all pages in the Royal Collection) containing preparatory drawings for portraits - of eighty-five drawings, only a handful have surviving Holbein paintings, though often copies have survived. David Hockney has speculated in the Hockney-Falco thesis that Holbein used a concave mirror to project an image of the subject onto the drawing surface. The image was then traced. However this thesis has not met with general acceptance from art historians. A subtle ability to render character may be noted in Holbein's work, as can be seen in his portraits of Thomas Cromwell, Desiderius Erasmus, and Henry VIII. The end results are convincing as definitive images of the subjects' appearance and personality.  Related Paintings of Hans Holbein :. | Portrait of a Member of the Wedigh Family | i rod sammetsklaning med parl-och rubinbesattning | William Warham,archeveque de Canterbury en 1504 | Childhood portrait of Edward V | Henry Howard The Earl of Surrey |
Related Artists:
TIBALDI, Pellegrino
Italian Painter, 1527-1596 Painter and architect. Pellegrino Tibaldi's early paintings show the influence of Bagnacavallo and of other Bolognese followers of Raphael, but his actual teacher is unknown. Vasari's claim that his own works in S Michele in Bosco, Bologna, formed Tibaldi's artistic education is hardly borne out by the latter's first efforts. The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (c. 1545; Bologna, Pin. N.) is, in its classical, hierarchical simplicity, clearly inspired by Raphael's manner as interpreted by his Bolognese imitators; although it also bears delicate marks of Parmigianino's grace, the power of its expressive dignity and the architectural background hint at Tibaldi's future development. Tibaldi's Adoration of the Shepherds
Cornelis van Dalem
1535-1576 Dutch Cornelis van Dalem Location Flemish painter. He was the son of a well-to-do cloth merchant living in Antwerp, but of Dutch origin. Cornelis received a humanistic education. His father, who owned land in Tholen, as a vassal to the Counts of Holland and Zeeland, was dean of the chamber of rhetorics De Olijftak (The Olive Branch) in Antwerp in 1552-3. According to van Mander, Cornelis was himself learned in poetry and history and only painted as an amateur, not for a living. Documents in the Antwerp archives invariably refer to him as a merchant, never as a painter, which no doubt accounts for the small number of known paintings by him. He learnt to paint with an otherwise unknown artist, Jan Adriaensens, who had also taught his older brother Lodewijk van Dalem ( fl 1544-85). The latter was inscribed as a pupil in 1544-5 and became a master in the guild in 1553-4. Cornelis was himself inscribed a year after his brother, and he became a master in 1556, the same year he married Beatrix van Liedekercke, a member of an Antwerp patrician family. They lived in Antwerp until late 1565, when, apparently for religious reasons, they left for Breda, together with the artist mother, who had become a widow in 1561. In 1571 several local witnesses testified that van Dalem, who was then living in a small castle, De Ypelaar, in Bavel, near Breda, was strongly suspected of being a heretic. He was never seen in church and was said, on the contrary, to have often attended Protestant services and to have publicly expressed contempt for Papists.
Schlesinger Henri Guillaume
French portraits and genre painter , 1846-1884