Hans Holbein the Younger

1497–1543

Hans Holbein the Younger was a German-Swiss artist who became one of the most important portrait painters of the northern Renaissance. After working in Basel, he travelled to England and entered the service of Henry VIII. His precise images of courtiers, merchants and royal family members shaped the visual memory of Tudor England. Holbein also produced designs, murals and diplomatic marriage portraits, including the famous image of Anne of Cleves. He died in London in 1543.

Holbein appears in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, where portraits and the act of looking become part of Thomas Cromwell’s political world. He is also a supporting character in numerous Tudor novels concerned with Henry’s court and foreign marriages. Fiction often uses his paintings as if they reveal private character, although each portrait was a commissioned object shaped by status, symbolism and the sitter’s desired public image.

Alison Weir’s Anna of Kleve places Hans Holbein the Younger within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and art, learning and intellectual life.

Historical context