HOLBEIN, Hans, hints hill- or Whin, THE ELDER, German painter: b. Augsburg, 1460; d. Alsace, 1524. His art training began under the influence of Martin Schongauer, but he quickly launched out into a new style, which left ancient precedents behind. He developed a dramatic energy, a clear and lifelike coloring and pre-eminent distinction of expression which rendered him the acknowledged head of a new school. His figures took the attitude of life. The pictures over the altar in the cathedral at Augsburg, painted in 1493, are good specimens of his best work; in them are portrayed in cidents in the life of Virgin Mary. To the same class belong the remains of an altarpiece in the Dominican church at Frankfort-on-Main, representing scenes of the Passion (1501) ; 16 paintings of the Passion in the Munich Gal lery; the portrait of the artist with his two sons, in the gallery at Augsburg. His later pictures
show traces of the influence exercised by the Italian Renaissance, and those painted about 1512 and later are vastly superior to his early work. Among them is his 'Fount of Life' (1519), now in the royal gallery at Lisbon; the altarpiece 'Saint Sebastian) (1515), at Augs burg; the altarpiece 'Saint Katharine,' in the same gallery, etc. In such works the bold and devotional conception, delicacy and directness of expression, ease of drawing and splendor of coloring, are beyond praise. Excellent also are some of his preliminary sketches and outlines, and in Baste, Berlin and Copenhagen are col lections of his pencil sketches, the most re markable of which is that at Berlin. Consult Woltmann, 'Holbein und seine Zeit' (1866), and the monograph by A. B. Chamberlain (1905; new ed., 2 vols., London 1913).