Editing Hans Holbein the Younger (section)

== Legacy and reputation ==
[[File:Study for portrait of the More family, by Hans Holbein the Younger.jpg|thumb|300px|''Study for the Family Portrait of [[Thomas More]]'', {{circa|1527}}. Pen and brush in black on chalk sketch, Kunstmuseum Basel.]]
Holbein's fame owes something to that of his sitters. Several of his portraits have become [[cultural icon]]s.<ref>Michael, 240.</ref> He created the standard image of [[Henry VIII]].<ref>North, 29; Waterhouse, 21.</ref> In painting Henry as an iconic hero, however, he also subtly conveyed the tyranny of his character.<ref>North, 29; Ackroyd, 191; Brooke, 9.</ref> Holbein's portraits of other historical figures, such as [[Erasmus]], [[Thomas More]], and [[Thomas Cromwell]], have fixed their images for posterity. The same is true for the array of English lords and ladies whose appearance is often known only through his art. For this reason, John North calls Holbein "the cameraman of Tudor history".<ref>North, 33.</ref> In Germany, on the other hand, Holbein is regarded as an artist of the Reformation, and in Europe of humanism.<ref>Waterhouse, 16–17.</ref>

In Basel, Holbein's legacy was secured by his friend Amerbach and by Amerbach's son Basilius, who collected his work. The Amerbach-Kabinett later formed the core of the Holbein collection at the [[Kunstmuseum Basel]].<ref>Müller, ''et al.'', 32–33.</ref> Although Holbein's art was also valued in England, few 16th-century English documents mention him. Archbishop [[Matthew Parker]] (1504–75) observed that his portraits were "delineated and expressed to the resemblance of life".<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 194.</ref> At the end of the 16th century, the miniature portraitist [[Nicholas Hilliard]] spoke in his treatise ''Arte of Limning'' of his debt to Holbein: "Holbein's manner have I ever imitated, and hold it for the best".<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 195.</ref> No account of Holbein's life was written until [[Karel van Mander]]'s often inaccurate "Schilder-Boeck" (Painter-Book) of 1604.<ref>North, 33–34; Bätschmann & Griener, 146, 199–201. Among Van Mander's dubious anecdotes is the story that Holbein angrily threw a nobleman downstairs for pestering him.</ref>

[[File:Man in a Black Cap, by John Bettes the Elder.jpg|thumb|left|upright|''Man in a Black Cap'', by [[John Bettes the Elder]], 1545. Oil on oak, [[Tate Britain]], London.]]
Holbein's followers produced copies and versions of his work, but he does not seem to have founded a school.<ref>Wilson, 280–81; Gaunt, 27.</ref> Biographer Derek Wilson calls him one of the great "one-offs" of art history.<ref name="auto"/> The only artist who appears to have adopted his techniques was [[John Bettes the Elder]], whose ''Man in a Black Cap'' (1545) is close in style to Holbein.<ref>Hearn, 46–47.</ref> Scholars differ about Holbein's influence on English art. In Foister's view: "Holbein had no real successors and few imitators in England. The disparity between his subtle, interrogatory portraits of men and women whose gazes follow us, and the stylised portraits of Elizabeth I and her courtiers can seem extreme, the more so as it is difficult to trace a proper stylistic succession to Holbein's work to bridge the middle of the century".<ref name =Foister15>Foister, 15.</ref> 

Nevertheless, "modern" painting in England may be said to have begun with Holbein.<ref>Waterhouse, 13.</ref> 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''.<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 194–95; Brooke, 52–56.</ref> The influence of Holbein's "monumentality and attention to texture" has been detected in Eworths' work.<ref>Brooke, 53.</ref> 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".<ref>Auerbach, 71.</ref>

[[File:The Holbein Chamber.jpg|thumb|right|upright|18th-century Holbein Chamber in [[Strawberry Hill House]].]]
A fashion for Old Masters in England after the 1620s created demand for Holbein, led by the connoisseur [[Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel]]. [[Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford]], offered to buy Holbein portraits from a friend and supply faithful copies as substitutes.<ref>[[Karen Hearn]], "Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector", Edward Chaney, ''The Evolution of English Collecting'' (Yale, 2003), pp. 225–226.</ref> The Flemish artists [[Anthony van Dyck]] and [[Peter Paul Rubens]] discovered Holbein through Arundel.<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 202. [[Philip Fruytiers]] depicted Howard and his family with Holbein's portraits of his ancestors [[Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk]], and [[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey]], in the background.</ref> Arundel commissioned engravings of his Holbeins from the Czech [[Wenceslaus Hollar]], some of works now lost. From this time, Holbein's art was also prized in the Netherlands, where the picture dealer Michel Le Blon became a Holbein connoisseur.<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 203.</ref> The first ''[[catalogue raisonné]]'' of Holbein's work was produced by the Frenchman Charles Patin and the Swiss Sebastian Faesch in 1656. They published it with Erasmus's [[The Praise of Folly|''Encomium moriæ'' (''The Praise of Folly'')]] and an inaccurate biography that portrayed Holbein as dissolute.

In the 18th century, Holbein found favour in Europe with those who saw his precise art as an antidote to the [[Baroque]]. In England, the connoisseur and antiquarian [[Horace Walpole]] (1717–97) praised him as a master of the [[Gothic art|Gothic]].<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 208.</ref> Walpole hung his [[neo-Gothic]] house at [[Strawberry Hill House|Strawberry Hill]] with copies of Holbeins and kept a Holbein room. From around 1780, a re-evaluation of Holbein set in, and he was enshrined among the canonical masters.<ref>Bätschmann & Griener, 208–209; Borchert, 191. Borchert terms this process the "Romantic sacralization of the arts".</ref> A new cult of the sacral art masterpiece arose, endorsed by the German Romantics. This view suffered a setback during the famous controversy known as the "''Holbein-Streit''" (Holbein dispute) in the 1870s. It emerged that the revered Meyer ''Madonna'' at Dresden was a copy, and that the little-known version at Darmstadt was the Holbein original.<ref>Borchert, 187–88. The copy at Dresden was made by Bartholomäus Sarburgh in about 1637.</ref> Since then, scholars have gradually removed the attribution to Holbein from many copies and derivative works. The current scholarly view of Holbein's art stresses his versatility, not only as a painter but as a draughtsman, printmaker, and designer.<ref>Roskill, "Introduction", in Roskill & Hand, 9.</ref> Art historian Erika Michael believes that "the breadth of his artistic legacy has been a significant factor in the sustained reception of his oeuvre".<ref>Michael, 227.</ref>