Hans Holbein the Younger

Born in Augsburg around 1497, Holbein worked first in Basel painting murals, religious works, and stained glass, then made his name with portraits of Erasmus that carried across Europe. When the Reformation unsettled Basel, he sailed for England in 1526 with a letter from Erasmus and found welcome in Thomas More's humanist circle. He returned to Basel for four years, then came back to England in 1532 under Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, rising by 1535 to King's Painter to Henry VIII. In that role he chronicled the court in the years Henry broke from Rome - portraits of royals and nobles, designs for jewellery and plate, festive decorations. He drew and painted with rare precision, embedding allusion beneath the surface, and died in London between October and November 1543. He founded no school, but the portraits endure: sureness, economy, penetration into character.