Erasmus of Rotterdam

Hans Holbein the Younger

ca. 1532 · Oil on linden panel · Robert Lehman Collection

Hans Holbein the Younger was one of the most celebrated portraitists of the sixteenth century. At an early age he won commissions to paint portraits of prominent merchants in Basel, and in later years he attracted powerful patrons in England, including Sir Thomas More. Holbein made several portraits of the great humanist and scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466/1469 - 1536). Shown in half-length three-quarter profile, his hands just visible between the fur cuffs of his coat, Erasmus is depicted as he appeared around 1530, when he was about sixty. Tufts of the sitter's gray hair poke out from beneath his black cap, deep lines mark the area around his mouth, and the skin shows signs of loosening below his stubbly chin, but the sensitivity and intensity of Erasmus's scholarly mind are still richly apparent in his piercing dark eyes. Holbein's close association with the humanist and scholar is reflected not only in these and other admiring portraits but also in the letters of introduction written on Holbein's behalf by Erasmus to his friends in England when the artist traveled there in 1526. It was through Erasmus that Holbein was commissioned to paint portraits of Sir Thomas More and his family. The white label painted at the upper left of this panel is a later addition, made some fifty years after Holbein's death when the painting was in the collection of John, Lord Lumley of Surrey and London.

Artist

Hans Holbein the Younger

Date

ca. 1532

Medium

Oil on linden panel

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975