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 :. | Man in a Black Cap | Portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach | Thomas Cromwell | Recreation by our Gallery | Ximengqiaozhi |
Related Artists:
Natoire, Charles Joseph
French, 1700-77 French painter, draughtsman and teacher, active also in Italy. An exact contemporary of Fran?ois Boucher, he was a painter of cabinet pictures, decorations and tapestry cartoons and one of the most adept practitioners of Rococo art in 18th-century France. The greater part of his career was spent in Paris, where he received important commissions from Louis XV as well as from private patrons. In 1751 he accepted the post of Director of the Acad?mie de France in Rome.
j. beraud
1849-1935 1849 - Saint Petersburg, Russia - 1935 Paris) Scenes of daily life painted by Jean Beraud reveal interest in Naturalism. Such diverse themes as crowds observing the funeral of Victor Hugo (see Carnavalet, Paris) or studies of the interior of a Parisian Bank Apartment reflect aspects of French society during the Third Republic.
Jerome-Martin Langlois
French Academic Painter, 1779-1838