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 Jane Seymour, | Portrait of an Unknown Man Holding Gloves | Recreation by our Gallery | Jane Seymour, Queen of England | The Ambassadors |
Related Artists:
ZIMMERMANN, Dominikus
German sculptor, Bavarian school (b. 1685, Wessobrunn, d. 1766, Wies)..Architect, stuccoist and painter, brother of (1) Johann Baptist Zimmermann. For the first two decades of his creative life, from about 1705, he worked mainly as a builder of altars and as a marbler. His most important commission came from the Benedictine abbey of Fischingen (Thurgau), for which he made six artificial marble altars with scagliola inlays (1708-9). Similar altars, mainly in Swabia, are attributed to him or known to be his work; their construction shows the influence of Johann Jakob Herkommer, with whose work Dominikus became familiar while living in F?ssen (1708-16). Between 1709 and 1713 he worked with (1) Johann Baptist Zimmermann at the Buxheim Charterhouse (see above), producing artificial marble altars and stuccowork that is characterized by the botanical accuracy of the plant motifs.
Benjamin C.Brown
American,is best remembered for his Impressionist renderings of the Sierra Mountains and poppy-filled spring meadows.1865-1942
SODOMA, Il
Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1477-1549 Sienese painter, whose real name was Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. Born in Vercelli, Piedmont, he went to Rome c.1508. Commissioned by Pope Julius II, he painted frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican. Raphael's frescoes afterward replaced most of his work there. For Agostino Chigi in the Farnesina Villa, Sodoma painted two frescoes, The Marriage of Alexander and Alexander in the Tent of Darius. In Siena and its vicinity he produced many works, executed in a saccharine style.