Hans Holbein de Jonge

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498-1543) was a German painter from Augsburg who first worked in Basel, where he portrayed Erasmus and designed woodcuts such as the Dance of Death. With a recommendation from Erasmus he went to England in 1526, to Thomas More. From 1532 he lived in London and became court painter to Henry VIII. His portraits are of unprecedented precision; The Ambassadors (1533), with its distorted skull, is world famous. His portrait drawings are in the Royal Collection, and Basel keeps much of his early work.