Thomas Holbein HendleyBiblio.com
IMITATIONS OF ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY HANS HOLBEIN IN THE COLLECTION OF HIS MAJESTY For the Portraits of Illustrious Persons of the Court of Henry VIII With Biographical Tracts
1812réf. 34168London: Published by John Chamberlaine the Keeper of the King's Drawings and Medals. Printed by William Bulmer and Co. Shakespeare Printing Office 1812. 2 volumes. First Edition of the century First Issue the second edition overall. A RARE EXAMPLE WITH THE PLATES BOTH IN COLOURED AND UNCOLOURED STATE THUS WITH DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF PLATES NORMALLY ENCOUNTERED. With 84 hand-coloured plates and 84 plates uncoloured all separately printed on India paper and tipped onto full-page leaves each facing the other the plates with protective leaf separating the two each image with two variations mezzotint portraits of Holbein and his wife a total of 168 illustrations on full-page plates four plates dated from the first printing in 1792 the other 164 dated 1812 as with the publishing date. The plates are printed on a variety of papers slightly different from one another--grey buff white lavender and pink. Folio 34.5 x 2 beautifully bound in full red morocco gilt extra the spines with gilt tooled raised bands separating the compartments which are elaborately gilt decorated within triple gilt filleted frames gilt stippling to the borders of the frames lettered in gilt in one compartment the covers beautifully gilt decorated in all-over designs the borders with gilt stippled lines enclosing three gilt filleted borders surrounding an elaborate gilt inner border of floral tooling bordered again by a stippled and multi-filleted gilt frame the whole surrounding elaborate and large gilt tooled decorations at the inner corners and along the rules the edges gilt ruled the turnovers gilt rolled marbled endleaves all edges gilt very elaborate and beautifully preserved binding work. unpaginated. Fine copies beautifully preserved very light wear or age evidence to the bindings which remain strong the pages and plates all in good order some very occasional light foxing to the papers as is typical the colours remain vibrant and as printed the giltwork on the bindings is in very pleasing condition a very handsome set indeed. FIRST EDITION AND AN UNUSUALLY SPECIAL COPY BOUND IN FULL RED MOROCCO GILT EXTRA WITH THE PLATES PRINTED ON INDIA PAPER IN BOTH COLOURS AND BLACK AND WHITE A COPY WITH DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF PLATES USUALLY ENCOUNTERED. Hans Holbein the Younger; c. 1497 – between 7 October and 29 November 1543 was a German-Swiss painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art satire and Reformation propaganda and he made a significant contribution to the history of book design. He is called "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father Hans Holbein the Elder an accomplished painter of the Late Gothic school. Holbein was born in Augsburg but worked mainly in Basel as a young artist. At first he painted murals and religious works and designed stained glass windows and illustrations for books from the printer Johann Froben. He also painted an occasional portrait making his international mark with portraits of humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Holbein travelled to England in 1526 in search of work with a recommendation from Erasmus. He was welcomed into the humanist circle of Thomas More where he quickly built a high reputation. He returned to Basel for four years then resumed his career in England in 1532 under the patronage of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. By 1535 he was King's Painter to Henry VIII. In this role he produced portraits and festive decorations as well as designs for jewellery plate and other precious objects. His portraits of the royal family and nobles are a record of the court in the years when Henry was asserting his supremacy over the Church of England. Holbein's art has sometimes been called realist since he drew and painted with a rare precision. His portraits were renowned in their time for their likeness and it is through his eyes that many famous figures of his day are pictured today such as Erasmus and More. He was never content with outward appearance however; he embedded layers of symbolism allusion and paradox in his art to the lasting fascination of scholars. In the view of art historian Ellis Waterhouse his portraiture "remains unsurpassed for sureness and economy of statement penetration into character and a combined richness and purity of style." For Holbein "everything began with a drawing". A gifted draughtsman he was heir to a German tradition of line drawing and precise preparatory design. Holbein's chalk and ink portraits demonstrate his mastery of outline. He always made preparatory portraits of his sitters though many drawings survive for which no painted version is known suggesting that some were drawn for their own sake. Ellis Waterhouse wrote that "modern" painting in England may be said to have begun with Holbein. That later artists were aware of his work is evident in their own sometimes explicitly. Hans Eworth for example painted two full-length copies in the 1560s of Holbein's Henry VIII derived from the Whitehall pattern and included a Holbein in the background of his Mary Neville Lady Dacre. The influence of Holbein's "monumentality and attention to texture" has been detected in Eworths' work. According to art historian Erna Auerbach: "Holbein's influence on the style of English portraiture was undoubtedly immense. Thanks to his genius a portrait type was created which both served the requirements of the sitter and raised portraiture in England to a European level. It became the prototype of the English Court portrait of the Renaissance period". Holbein worked for Thomas Cromwell as he masterminded Henry VIII's reformation. Cromwell commissioned Holbein to produce reformist and royalist images including anti-clerical woodcuts and the title page to Myles Coverdale's English translation of the Bible. Henry VIII had embarked on a grandiose programme of artistic patronage. His efforts to glorify his new status as Supreme Head of the Church culminated in the building of Nonsuch Palace which started in 1538. By 1536 Holbein was employed as the King's Painter on an annual salary of 30 pounds—though he was never the highest-paid artist on the royal payroll. see C. Müller et al. This striving for perfection is very evident in his portrait drawings where he searches with his brush for just the right line for the sitter's profile. The critical faculty in making this choice and his perception of its potency in communicating decisively the sitter's character is a true measure of Holbein's supreme greatness as a portrait painter. Nobody has ever surpassed the revealing profile and stance in his portraits: through their telling use Holbein still conveys across the centuries the character and likeness of his sitters with unrivalled mastery. see J. Rowlands Hans Holbein the Younger 1985 Published by John Chamberlaine, the Keeper of the King's Drawings and Medals. Printed by William Bulmer and Co., Shakespeare Pri hardcover
Buddenbrooks, Inc. · États-Unis9 625,00 $US≈ 8 582,26 €
