Family Reunion

To welcome back so distinguished an adopted son, the Swiss city of Basel just about knocked itself out that autumn day in 1538. Twelve years before. Hans Holbein the Younger had quit the town to seek richer rewards elsewhere. Now, dressed in the finest silk and velvet, he was court painter to King Henry VIII of England; his name was known throughout Europe, and Basel was ready to shower him with honors and commissions to lure him back permanently. The city failed, but it has cherished Holbein as its own ever since. This summer, when the University of Basel celebrated its 500th birthday, it decided to mark the occasion with a special tribute to the man who did not stay--a huge exhibition of 452 works, collected from eleven different countries, in honor not only of Hans but also of his father, his uncle and his brother.

Younger Holbein's father, Hans the Elder, of Augsburg, Germany, was one of the most sought-after religious painters of his day, and his younger brother Sigmund for several years worked as his assistant. For the current show, Basel could find only a handful of oils and sketches that may have been by Sigmund, while Hans the Elder is represented by 79. The most dazzling is the famed Fountain of Life (see color), which once belonged to the wife of Britain's Charles II.

Bitterness & Flattery. In 1511 Holbein the Elder did a memorable drawing of the somber-looking junior Hans, aged 14. A few years later young Hans and his brother Ambrosius were seeking their fortunes as artists in Basel, which, largely because of the presence of the great Dutch scholar Erasmus, was soon to call itself "the city of humanists." Once the young Hans so flattered Erasmus with a portrait sketch that the aging celibate declared if he really looked that good, he would go right out and marry. Ambrosius is believed to have died around the age of 25, leaving Hans Holbein the Younger to become the greatest Holbein of all.

Basel could not hold him forever: the bitterness that swept over the city at the time of the Reformation so stifled intellectual life that Erasmus complained to a friend in England, "The arts are freezing in this city." Armed with letters of introduction from the old scholar, Hans finally settled in England, where he painted everyone from Sir Thomas More to King Henry VIII himself. He made a couple of visits home, but each time returned to his fatter commissions in England, and there in 1543 he died of the plague.

Pain & Sorrow. His portraits were almost ruthless in their candor. He did not even try to conceal the pain that his neglect had caused his wife, or paint out the sadness imprinted on his children's faces (see color). In time the painting joined the collection of Basilius Ame-bach, whose wise and scholarly father, Bonifacius (see color), began rounding up Holbein canvases during the first convulsive years of the Reformation. After Basilius' death, the city and the university bought the Amerbach collection, which they own to this day. It is Basel's permanent tribute to an illustrious family --and to the son it lost.

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