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Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry

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On the nature of Holbein's portraits

Mark Roskill & Craig Harbison
Published online: 31 May 2012.

To cite this article: Mark Roskill & Craig Harbison (1987) On the nature of Holbein's portraits, Word & Image: A Journal of
Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 3:1, 1-26, DOI: 10.1080/02666286.1987.10435364

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 On the nature of Holbein' s
portraits
MARK ROSKILL and CRAIG HARBISON

I INTRODUCTION This study represents a sharing of ideas

To say that Hans Holbein's portraits are one of the glories ofWestern art and attitudes. The basic ideas and points
of view of parts u and m were initially
is a commonplace. It also follows naturally that much critical ingenuity conceived, researched and composed by
has been expended in trying to understand what makes these works so Mark Roskill. Holbein's drawings and
compelling. Holbein's portraits have been said to surround the sitters paintings are identified by their catalogue
numbers in, respectively, K. T. Parker,
with intriguing symbolic objects, to convey penetrating psychological 1M Drawings ofHans Holbrin in tM
insights, and to witness the stylistic predicament {commonly referred to Colll&tion ofH.M. 1M Km, at Wwlror
Downloaded by [New York University] at 16:58 28 April 2015

as 'mannerist') of later sixteenth-century art. While doing all these Castk (smd edn., London: Phaidon, 194-5)
things, the works at the same time clearly reflect the historical context in and Paul Ganz, 1M Paintings of Hans
Holbrin (London: Phaidon, 1950).
which most of them were created, the court of the English king, Henry
vm.
Using these and other approaches, have we dealt fully with what it is
a
that makes these images so memorable? Do we have sense of how and
why, in terms of creative processes, Holbein put these images together in
the way he did? A major motive of portraiture in sixteenth-century
Northern Europe may have been determined by the freezing-up of much
religious patronage and imagery. Like many of his contemporaries,
Holbein turned to a specialized field of work, portraiture, in order to
express his artistic sensibilities. This paper aims to focus on and describe
those sensibilities more fully.
Hans Holbein was fascinated with objects. Not only do they insistently
dot his paintings; his drawings show a particular care for them, too.
William Parr (Parker 57) and Lady Ratcliffe (Parker Ig) have carefully
delineated, colour-annotated jewellery designs beside them, as do many
other sitters. When pressed for time, Holbein seems to have spent just as
much of it on the jewellery or embroidery as on the eyes. In the paintings,
the sitters themselves, along with the lettering which often surrounds
them, become objects as well. All of these objects, including the sitters'
faces, can be thought of as defining character, whether by eliciting or
hiding it. How and why do those objects get there? How, too, do they 1 - This is the interpretation of William

achieve the particularly gripping effects with which these portraits are so S. Heckscher, 'Reflections on seeing
Holbein's portrait of Erasmus at
often credited? Longford Castle', in Douglas Fraser It al,
A glass carafe may refer to a sitter's drinking habits; 1 an anamorphic- Essays ill tM History ofArt Prumt.d to
ally-distorted skull may point to the mannerist void at the centre of lbulolf WittokoWII" (London: Phaidon,
1g67), pp. 14J2-I4-3·
things;2 any and all such objects also no doubt convey, intentionally, the 2 - See Gert von der Osten, Painting and
artist's tremendous technical skill or craft. But as critics we still seem to Sculptuu in Gmtumy and tM N.tMt-lands,
be caught between iconographic interpretations which are too concrete or 1500 to 1600 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
pre-determined and stylistic categories which are too vague, abstract 196g), p. 228; also the recent article by
Konrad HofFmann, 'Hans Holbein d. J.:
and, like the narrowly-defined symbolism, extern~! to the artistic process. die "Gesandten'", Futschriflfor G.org
This, then, is where the present essay begins: with the fact that ~a .omz 70. Glburtstag (Thurbecke:
differing approaches to Holbein's portraits have been tried, but they all Sigmaringen, 1975), pp. 133-150.

3 - A comprehensive bibliography on the
subject of metaphor showing the growing
attention given to it, in recent times
especially, was compiled by Warren A.
Shibles, under the tide Mltaphor: An
AMDtatld Bibliography and History
(Whitewater, Wisconsin: Language Press,
I97I). Its coverage includes studies
written from many different directions,
not just ones belonging to literary theory
or philosophy (which has been the major
contributor); but it has only a handful of
items that concern themselves with the
plastic or visual arts, or with music.
4- In the recent collection of essays
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edited by Sheldon Sacks, On M•taphor
(Criti&sl Inquiry, 5 [I978], published in
book form in I979 by the University of
Chicago Press), Donald Davidson ('What
metaphors mean') brings up the first
point (p. 36) and Paul Ricoeur ('The
metaphorical process as cognition,
imagination and feeling') emphasizes the
second (see esp. pp. I45-I47• referring to
the 'pictorial dimension in ... the
jigrnali'DI character of metaphor' and
criticizing Max Black's theory for 'leaving
the problem ofinnovation unsolved').
5- These issues are very perceptively
discussed by Mary Hesse, 'The cognitive
claims ofmetaphor', inJ. P. van Noppcn
(ed.), M•taphor and R.ligion: 7'hlolinguislics
(Brussels: Vrije Univcrsiteit, Ig83 ), pp.
117f[ In opposition to the view that
metaphors represent an improper or
deviant use of words, she offers what she
terms a 'network' theory of meaning, and
cites approvingly Paul Ricoeur's essay,
'La metaphore vive' (a translated version
appears in his T/16 Ibdl of M•taPhor
[London: Routledge lit Kcgan Paul,
I978]), with its conception of 'split
reference' as at work here. See also her
'Texts without types and lumps without
laws', New Litlrary History, I7 (Ig85), part
3, pp. 3I-48, esp. p. 45i and Dan Sperber
and Deirdre Wilson, R.kfHIII&I:
Clllllllllllli&Gtion and Cognition (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard uP, Ig86), chapter 3, section
8, 'Literalness and metaphor', for the
view that 'creative exploitations of a
pc:rfectly general dimension oflanguage
usc ... [lead] in some cases [to]
literalness, in others metaphor' and that
'the surprise or beauty of a successful
creative metaphor' enforces in the hearer
the responsibility of 'actually
constructing' the resultant interpretation
(p. 1137)-
2 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
seem unsatisfactory as ways of explaining the works' special visual
character. The idea oflooking across to literature for a term that can be
transferred to this context, of artistic creation, does not assume that there
is any abiding, or even recurring analogy between the two kinds of
figurative language that has, as semiotic theory might suggest, the power
in itself to open up discussion in new and fruitful ways. It simply posits
that the use of a literary term in the present instance may have a heuristic
value of an illuminating kind, which cuts across conventional priorities in
art historical writing.
II A NEW PERSPECTIVE: METAPHORS, SIMILES AND PORTRAITURE
The claim that the terms 'metaphor' and 'simile' can be applied to
pictorial imagery entails a suggestive parallel to the use of those terms in
literature, and one that brings into focus the creative processes leading to
particular visual effects. But it is vested with a double difficulty of
argument. On the one hand it is necessary to take into account recent
theoretical discussion of metaphor and simile, as opposed to more
traditional explication of those terms, originally developed in antiquity
and handed down to the Renaissance. The application of the terms to
sixteenth-century portraiture brings up general premises of understand-
ing which directly reflect those modern terms of discussion. It is also the
case that the texts bearing on the understanding of metaphor and simile
that were available during the Renaissance need to be given their due
place, in determining the way sixteenth-century perceptions on the
subject had proceeded.3
The general premises referred to are, first, that metaphor and simile
possess certain built-,in aesthetic qualities, such as vividness and
pungency. It is their possession of these features that marks off their
application to the visual arts from what are characteristically thought of
as 'dead' metaphors, or as similes that have turned into mere cliches of
conventionalized practice. Vivid metaphors and similes are productive of
the creative possibilities of novelty and surprise. The response that they
call for is correspondingly one that brings in imagination and feeling.
They are not to be thought of as mere variations on accepted usage, or as
licensed departures from the 'normal'; or, at least, not only in that way.
To consider them in that fashion- as in the so-called substitution and
comparison theories of metaphor and simile- is to reduce the possibilities
of individual inventiveness to what can be measured against an existing
norm of usage.4-
Secondly, metaphor and simile take their place, along with other forms
of figurative language such as puns or deliberate ambiguities, within a
system of what may be called f71'1'bolism, in the broadest sense of that term.
What is in question here so permeates any language, whether verbal or
visual, that in fact all language can be described accordingly as
metaphorical or figurative. This permeation is not at the same time to be
accounted for simply in terms of departure from literalness or standardness of
meaning. Rather, in semantic terms, it is as if the presentational and the
referential aspects of 'meaning' (what the words or images in question
denote and the associations or connotations that they carry) tend to split
apart from one another. s
 Thirdly, the workings of both metaphor and simile are positional in
character; they operate as such by virtue of collocation and the
relationships that it establishes. Thus a flag is, in and of itself, an emblem.
Like the word 'Albion' for England or like a heraldic blazon, it serves as
an emblem or marker of national identity and history. It participates in a
language of symbolism when it is mounted on a staff and displayed for a
parade or special occasion. It thereby becomes (positionally) a symbol. If
prayers are said in front of it or it is invoked in a solemn form of address,
those then become functional and exegetic extensions of that basic
symbolicity. This model of the workings of symbolism also applies to the 6 - The terms ex•getic, operatioTUJl
workings of metaphor and simile, but in differing ways, reflecting (equivalent to functional) and positioTUJl
arc those adopted by Victor Turner to
differing processes at issue there.6 describe the three 'levels' or 'fields' of
It may be possible in a poem or a piece of prose to speak of a particular operation of a symbolic language, in his
word or phrase as representing a metaphor or a simile. But, in light of 1M Forrst of Symbols (Ithaca NY: Cornell
UP, 1g67), p. 50; but the way in Which
what has been said above, if those two terms are to be given an
they arc used for present purposes reflects
application to visual imagery, they should refer not to any individual the cogent critique of Turner afforded by
component or components of the imagery per se, but to their relationship
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Dan Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism

to and effect on the work as a whole. 7 (Cambridge: CUP, 1975), p. 62, where it is
argued that the positional meaning is in
As for the suggestion that metaphor and simile have a conceptual fact the 'primal one' for interpretative
relevance to the workings of visual imagery in the early sixteenth century, purposes in a symbolic system; the other
the case to be made for this is an indirect one, arising from the way in two types merely 'extend the object to be
interpreted'.
which figurative discourse was regarded at the time, in its rhetorical and 7 - A parallel to this view of the workings
poetic potentials. That portraiture and other forms of artistic creation of metaphor is to be found in Paul
could be thought of in an analogous fashion does not mean that there was Ricocur's essay, 'Metaphor and the
central problem of hermeneutics' (New
a theory in existence which sought to establish or ratify this affinity. Such
Literary History, 6 [1974], pp. 95-110,
a theory did not exist, because the way in which figuration was taken to reprinted in his HmtllfiiUtil;s G1lll tiN H111TU111
work, in the case of language, was governed as yet by a semantic &im&u, ed./trans. John B. Thompson,
prescriptiveness.a Therefore an affinity of means and communicative [Cambridge: CUP, 1g81], pp. 165-187),
where he speaks of a 'nascent' or
ends between media could only have been intuited by artists who were 'cmcrgcnt' quality to metaphor that links
exposed to comparable processes of selection and presentation in verbal 'local events' in a text to the import of the
forms of expression, or by patrons or subjects of the artists who were work as a whole. Sec also Charles D.
Hartman, 'Cognitive metaphor', New
attentive to the creative processes brought to bear; it could not, as an
Litnary History, 13 (1982), pp. 327-336,
intuition, have been formulated in words. for poetic metaphor as a 'structure of
Study of the classical texts that were available and read in the sixteenth relations' (p. 334).
8- Sec, for the shift from the 'standard'
century sheds light on the way in which metaphor and simile were viewed
view of metaphor to a modem
at the time, in their character and operation. It does not yield any overall understanding of it defined in these
definition of the two terms, justifying their transfer to the visual arts or terms, the introduction by DavidS. Miall
providing a schema for doing so.9 At the same time, it does generate a way to Metaphor: Probltnns G1lll PersjJecliiiM
(Brighton-Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
of comparing Northern and Italian practices in portraiture, according to Harvester/Humanities Press, 1g82),
the creative processes themselves, as reflected in the selection and p. xiii.
arrangement of objects accompanying the portrait image. In the case of 9 - Preceding cases in the literature of the
Northern Renaissance portraits, and particularly those ofHolbein, it will application of the terms metaphor and
simile to visual imagery can be grouped
be claimed that the imagery operates in a way that can be likened to the into two categories. First, there arc cases
workings of 'simile'. Contemporary Italian portraits, in contrast, focusing on a particular clement in the
gravitate towards a way of working for which the term 'metaphor' seems ensemble and its suggestiveness, where
another term would be more appropriate
the more appropriate analogue. to describe the effect in question: for
This way of describing the developments in question falls outside the example, P. N. Furbank (Rejl~~:tions on tiN
scope of either stylistic or iconographical analysis. It does not bring in for Word 'lmag•' [London: Scckcr and
explanatory purposes any broad characteristics of style, such as those Warburg, 1970], chapter 1), calb the
firescrccn in Robert Campin's Virgin oftlu
that distinguish Mannerism, with its variations of appearance from one Firrsmm '· 1425 (London: National

3
 Gallery), 'the nearest you can get to a
metaphor of this kind in painting ... it is
a firescreen, but it also suggests a halo'
(p. 2), while H. Diane Russell in her
introduction to the exhibition catalogue
Clarvk Lo"ain 1600-1682 (Washington nc:
National Gallery of Art, 1g83), compares
the _image of the deer in the 1652
Larulscap. with Ascanius Shooting thl Stag of
Silvius with its use in Marvell's poem
'The Nymph Complaining on the Death
of her Faun': the animal there 'is not
Christ but rather is like Christ ... and
one feels that this simile has relevance for
Claude's image', namely that it expresses
Claude's concept of the sanctity of nature
as embodied in the deer (p. 87). A more
correctly parallel term in the first of these
cases would be analogy, and in the second
coru:eit (which in the later sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries could have an
Downloaded by [New York University] at 16:58 28 April 2015
essentially serious tenor to it).
Secondly, there are cases where the
term metaphor or simile is used to
describe a very general or broad aspect of
the workings of symbolism, applicable at
any period: for example, Ernst Gombrich,
Art arul Illusion, A Study in thl Psychology of
PictorialJUprumtatiDn (New York:
Pantheon, 196o), chapter 3 and also pp.
23, 73, noting that simile was the
medieval term for the usc of stereotyped
schemata or patterns, and pp. 104 and
110, noting the artist's development of
metaphors for the purpose of
symbolization, as in Picasso's Baboon arul
Yo11111; and Arthur Danto, 'J"'M
Transfiguration oft& Commonplau: A
Philosophy ofArt (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, Ig8I), pp. I6?-I74• where
the discussion of forms of visual metaphor
includes both Rembrandt's Saskia as
Flo~a and Napoleon as a Roman Emperor.
There are also cases where the
substitution and comparison view of
metaphor and simile seems well suited to
describing functions of reference and
'doubling' (e.g. in Titian's Allocution of
Alfonso d'Avalos, the arm gesture carrying
the association of a Roman Emperor's
address to his troops; in Bronzino's
Allegory in the National Gallery in
London, the face which is also a mask),
as these functions differ from what is
found in the classical and medieval
version of visual symbolism (codified and
disposable in ever new combinations).
But such a view promises more than it
can actually provide when it comes to
such examples as Bruegel's B~elui/Jfrs
(with beehives instead of heads) or his
W1dding F1ast (with the figure of a
water-carrier referring to the Mamag1 at
Cana, as if transposed from there to this
secular context); or in the case of
4 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
country to another. Nor, to account for changes in subject-matter, does it
posit the availability of specific texts justifying particular motifs. Rather it
represents a form of structural and contextual analysis which serves to
characterize aspects of Holbein's practice which would otherwise, in the
frameworks of style and iconography, appear as somewhat anomalous. It
allows for the focus on particular images as if they were isolated in time as
well as space, and also on the inclusion ofwords and texts in a fashion
which implies a specific channeling of interchange between addressor
and recipient.
Holbein's decision to proceed in these ways, in the portraits of his to be
discussed, reflects certain innovative perceptions as to how images
and/or objects could be made to operate in relation to one another. It also
reflects particular historical conditions of the Reformation period,
including new forms of patronage or the adaptation of traditional forms of
support for the artist to new ends. Here, too, the inherited understanding
of metaphor and simile that was available at the time fits in, in its
association with a reformulation of what the presentational and the
referential aspects of a commissioned likeness could, between them,
accomplish. Given that portraiture had traditionally been expected to
include certain components, and that a decline of the powers vested in
established authority put these components into question, or the needs of
new patrons invited the adoption of a more distanced perspective on their
use, a drying up of inspiration on the artist's part might be expected. But
the result, in Holbein's case, was rather an enlivening of the constituent
features of portraiture and their inherent potential.
Discussion of metaphor and simile and their roles in language goes
back to ancient times, to the classical theory of rhetoric. According to the
Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, summarizing those discussions,
metaphor represents the transfer of a name, action or descriptive term to
an object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is applicable.
Simile is defined as a 'rhetorical figure by which an object, scene or action
is introduced by way of comparison, for explanatory, illustrative or
merely ornamental purpose'.IO On those terms.ofunderstanding, then,
the basic difference between metaphor and simile could be expressed by
saying that in the case of metaphor the comparison introduced is more
direct or concretely intended, whereas in simile it is more subsidiary, or
simply uses the subject as a point of departure for figurative embellish-
ment.
In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries only two basic texts from
classical antiquity were available, to provide a grounding for the
understanding of the workings of metaphor and simile. One was
Aristotle's Rhetoric, which appeared in a Latin translation in Italy toward
the end of the fifteenth century. That Latin version was probably also
available, though less readily, in northern Europe, where a published
version of the text did not come out until considerably later and then in
Greek. II
In Aristotle's account, metaphor and simile are treated as interlinked
and as representing deviant versions of normal linguistic usage. Their
working is defined in terms of 'transfer', or transposition, as for instance
from species to genus or the reverse. This is designated in the Rhetoric
 (III.4.4) as the principle of 'similar ratios' .12 In the Rhetoric, the major
point made about the choice and role of metaphors that is relevant for
present purposes is that they need to be appropriate in their contribution,
and that the transfer should be made accordingly from 'objects that are
beautiful' (III.2.13). Here Aristotle adds to the beauties of sound and
meaning the possibility that the source from which the metaphor is
deduced may be an image that presents itself as beautiful 'to the sight'.
Similes are given essentially a secondary role in the discussion, being
referred to later on (III. I 1.11) as 'in some way [only] approved
metaphors'. Simile serves to embellish the discourse, on the same
principle of analogy, and because of the poetic air or flavour that it
carries, it should be introduced only occasionally in the case of pr9se.
The other text from antiquity available on this subject was Quintilian's
De lnstitutione Oratoria.I3 Quintilian's discussion of the topic in Books VIII
and IX was more extended than that of Aristotle in the Rhetoric. It was
also widely known by the end of the fifteenth century, particularly among
Italian grammarians and humanists, and was increasingly read and used
Downloaded by [New York University] at 16:58 28 April 2015
in the early sixteenth century by them and by their Northern
counterparts.
Quintilian follows Aristotle in maintaining that metaphor is 'on the
whole ... a shorter form of simile' (VIII.6.8); that the linguistic operation
entailed (as implied in the Latin term for metaphor, translatio) is one of
transfer, of a noun or a verb 'from the place to which it properly belongs to
another where there is either no literal term or the "transferred" is better
than the literal', so that it may serve in prose form either 'to make [one's]
meaning clearer . . . or to produce a decorative effect' (VIII.6.s--6).
Similes are designed comparably as a means of ornamentation, either 'for
insertion among arguments to help [one's] proof' or alternatively 'to
make [one's] pictures yet more vivid' (VIII.3.72). I tis important that the
subjects chosen for them be 'neither obscure nor unfamiliar' and that the
insertion of metaphors into discourse should correspondingly be 'temper-
ate and timely'. On this point Quintilian cites Cicero's practical
recommendation in the De Oratore that metaphors should not be too great
or too little for their subject, or be inappropriate (VIII.6.I4-14). 14
Quintilian does, however, depart somewhat from Aristotle in putting
forward a substitution and comparison view of metaphor and simile. Simile
consists merely of comparison of 'some object to the thing we wish to
describe', while metaphor entails an actual substitution of one for the other
(VIII.6.8). Subsequently he places the substitution of one word for
another among tropes- including under this heading both metaphor and
allegory. On this subject he says that just as a continued metaphor
develops into allegory so a continued series of tropes develops into afigure
where meaning and sometimes the whole import of the discourse 'conflict
with the language and the tone of voice adopted' ,15 This allows for a
larger import attaching to the tenor of the discourse as a whole than can
be attributed to the individual choice of images within it.
Thus Quintilian's account of metaphor and simile goes beyond
Aristotle's in the Rhetoric, while accepting the premise of a deviation from
normal usage. It allows that a simile may produce 'sublime, rich,
attractive or striking [effects]' as the case may be'' in the hands of a
portraiture such examples from the
fifteenth century as van Eyck's
'Tymotheos' portrait or Uccello's Sir john
Hawkwood; or from the early sixteenth
century Cranach's Cardi11al AlhrechiiHIII
Brandenburg as Saintjmnn~, or Venetian
portraits such as those by Sebastiane del
Piombo. In such examples there is a
flexible and expansive set of relationships
at work between connotations attached to
the image and the provision of a
recognizable likeness, which defeats the
possibility of using the terms metaphor
and simile in a clear-cut and unified way.
10- Sir Paul Harvey (ed.), O:~~ford
Companion to Classical Litmztllre (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1946), pp. 267, 396.
Corresponding definitions for the
sixteenth century are given in the Oiford
English Dictionary, sub. voc., citing usages
of 1553 and 1589 respectively.
11 - The Rh6toric is recorded as existing in
manuscript form in Italy from the 14201;
Latin translation by Hermannus
Alemannus, ed. Lancilottus de Zerlis
(Venice, 1481); Greek version (Basel,
1529). Aristotle's Poetics, which contains a
more extended discussion of the workings
of metaphor and simile, is recorded in
manuscript form in Italy from the 148os,
but it did not become available as a
published text until Greek and Latin
versions came out in the later 1530s (ed.
Alexander Paccius [Venice, 1536 and
Basel, 153 7]), and fuller familiarity with
its content dates from later still, after the
appearance of Francesco Robortello's
commentary in 1548.
For the availability of Aristotle's texts
in manuscript form and in vernacular
translation, seeR. R. Bolgar, TM Classical
Hnitag1 tl7ld its B~n~ji&iariu (Cambridge:
cuP, 1954), appendices I and II. Other
information about Italian and Northern
editions is taken from the British Mru111111
Catalog~~~ ofl'rinlltl Books. Both sources
indicate that following Brunetto Latini's
translation of the Rh6toric in 1541 several
Italian translations of both it and the
Po1tics followed in 1548-1551.
12- See further the Poetics, ch. XXI. The
entire discussion in the Rh6toric, where the
primary concern as stated at the start is
with prose usage, consists oflll.2.8-15
(for metaphor), 111.4 (for simile as a form
of metaphor) and III.II.II-13 (for
simile). Tbe translation used is that of
Theodore Buckley, Aristotll's Thatis1 on
Rh6toric (1.11111 Poetics) literally translated
from the Greek (London, 1853).
13- Editions appeared in Rome in 1470
and in Venice in 1471, 1480 and 1493-94.
That knowledge of this text was available
earlier is indicated by Alberti's use of it
as a source on ancient painting (D1lla
5
 Pittura, ca. I436, ed. &. trans. John particular skilled orator, insofar as it creates 'the impression of novelty
Spencer [New Haven: Yale UP, I9S6],
esp. p. 64, where the source is named).
and the unexpected' in contrast to commonplace examples or degener-
Michael Baxandall points out that ated practices (VIII.3·74-76). There is a kinship here to the modern
distinction between conventi9nalized verbal usage and the possibility
a
Bartholomeus Facius's use of the term
.figuratw derives similarly from
within the same language of true linguistic inventiveness. Is This may
Quintilian's discussion of.figuru
(rhetorical figures) in his account of entail, in the workings of simile, an effect of displacement from one
ancient sculptures in which an effect of context or sphere of operation to another rather than mere comparison.
grace and charm is introduced by And slmilarly, though it is Aristotle's view of the workings of metaphor
'variations of the straight line . . . and
departing from ordinary usage' (III.s,
that dominated formal discussion of this subject in the Renaissance,
8-u, on the Discobolus); see Baxandall's Quintilian's version approaches more nearly the modern view that the
'Bartholomeus Facius on Painting', vividness and pungency of a metaphor come from the way in which
Joumal of till Warhurg and Courtauld
IJUtilutu, 28 (I964), p. 9S, and his Giotto
different elements or images are yoked together to set up an effect of
and 1M Orators (Oxford: OUP, I97I), p. IBf tension or outright contradiction.17 Quintilian accepts the operation as
and p. I I8 for Valla's similar response in being one of a 'transfer' kind, in which a substitution for the 'literal' or
the I4SOS to Quintilian's discussion of the
parallel between the development of
expected meaning of a word or phrase takes place. But he also includes
writing and that of painting and sculpture. the idea that a 'bold and hazardous' metaphor may 'exalt the theme' in
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In the first quarter of the sixteenth
century several more editions of
Quintilian came out in Venice (Iso6,
ISIS, ISI4, IS2I), and one in Florence
also (ISIS, edited by Nicolaus Angelius).
For awareness ofQuintilian's arguments
as reflected in Italian commentaries on
Horace's Ars P01ti&a, from ISOO on, see
Bernard S. Weinberg, A History ofLiUrary
Criti&ima ill 1M Italian RmaisstmU (Chicago:
Chicago UP, I96I), II, pp. 8!HJ4, 92,
!JS-97. In the north of Europe there were
two French editions of the early sixteenth
century (Paris, ISI6 and IS27), and it
was also issued in Cologne in IS2I and
IS27 (edited by Gerardus Bucoldianus)
and in Basel in IS29 (edited by Joannes
Sichardus).
Quintilian's discussion appears at
VII1.3 7o-82 (simile) and 6.I-IB
(metaphor). cr. also V.II for the use of
simile in proof, and XII. IO for the
comparable discussion of the visual arts.
The translation used is that of H. E.
Biider (London: Loeb Classical Library,
I926).
Among other classical texts that deal
with the subject but became available
only later, that ofLonginus appeared in
Greek in Basel, ISS4-SS, and in Latin in
Venice, IS72; that ofHennogenes in
Latin trans. in Paris in I S4S and Basel in
ISso; and that of Demetrius Phalerius in
Greek in Florence, IS42 and ISS2, and in
Greek and Latin in Basel, ISS7 and
Florence, IS62. See the British Mruft1711
Catalogru ofPriiiiMl Books.
I4- Cicero's n. Orato, was also
available for reading in a Roman edition
of I4fi8 and Venetian ones of I470 and
I478•
IS- As in the example of Socrates's use
of a 'figurative form of irony', disguising
the 'entire meaning' (IX.2.46).
such a way that 'inanimate objects are given life and action', with a
resultant effect of 'extraordinary sublimity' (VIII.6. I I).
This in turn makes it possible to see how a painting or other visual
image could act upon the viewer's imagination and feeling as metaphor
and simile do in the case oflanguage. Its effect would be to give the work
as a whole a vividly dramatic or immediately startling quality. The
cumulative organization that brought this about would have its basis in
the way in which the component elements of the imagery were set up and
interrelated with one another. Visual analogues to the workings of
metaphor and simile, conceived of on those lines, are to be found not only
in images of the early sixteenth century, but also in the art of the
Romantic period and on down into this century. Is Recognition of this
possibility does not appear as the contribution of any one artist, or as the
invention of any one time. Rather, it represents a recognition that first
took on force during the early modern period and became a basis for
pictorial innovation through its role in the cultural life of that time.
* * *
One way of categorizing the portraits of the fifteenth century, both
Northern and Italian, would be on the threefold basis of those which are
designed to be taken literally in their presentation; those where the figure
is placed in a context including persons or objects that carry associations
securing the person's identity; and those involving 'play-acting' situa-
tions which serve to expand upon traits of character associated with the
person. 19 In the first group would fall those portraits which, in a tradition
of discourse which goes back to the later fourteenth century in Italy, are
praised for authenticity of representation.2o In the second group would
come those portraits which include prized objects of ownership or the
tools of a person's profession, surrounding him in the same kind of way as
attributes in the case of saints. The third group would include donors in
the wings of altarpieces or portrayals that involve an encounter between

6 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON

 the subject and a presence representing the world 'beyond'. (as when I6- In French structuralism, this
distinction is traditionally phrased in
Canon van der Paele is depicted by Van Eyck kneeling beside the
terms of langw on the one hand (language
Madonna and Child).2I as virtual and available) and parol. on the
By the early sixteenth century what may be called 'limit-cases' are other (language in active usc).
arrived at in each one of these categories. These are cases in which a I 7 - Examples illustrating the workings
of simile and metaphor as described here
distinct element of ambiguity, uncertainty or equivocation enters into the are to be found in Wordsworth's poetry:
operation of the portrait.22 In the first category, such a limit-case is 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'
reached in the example of'keepsake' portraits-images of a loved one that ('Dafl'odils') and 'England ... is a fen of
stagnant waters' (En,ltmd, 1802, ii) - both
are small-scale and transportable. These came into being in the North at in fact examples that appear in
the end of the fifteenth century, then became more widely current from dictionaries of literary terms.
the 1520s on. Such portraits serve as a living and speaking likeness ofthe The term displsumna is one used by
absent person, both functionally, in the way they are bestowed, kept and Sperber (.R.tl&inkVIf Symbolism, p. n9); the
notions oftcnsion and contradiction are
treasured, and exegetically, in the way they are commented upon as implied in the 'interaction' view of
making possible a dialogue back and forth that compensates for the metaphor put forward by Max Black,
absence (as in one of Castiglione's elegies extolling such a portrait of him Modlls flllll M1taplum, (Ithaca, NY: Comcll
UP, Ig6!1), ch. 3, and 'More about
by Raphael).2!1 At the same time, for all of their exact detail, the idea ofa metaphor', Ditdt~t:ti&IJ, 3I (I977), pp.
substitute and equivalent presence is at odds, in concrete physical terms,
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43I-457, repr. in M1taphor flllll Tlun!.ght,

with the smallness of scale. ed. A. Ortony (Cambridge: cuP, I979),
pp. I9-43·
In the second category Diirer's Self-portrait of 1500 (Alte Pinakothek, I 8- Both in Romantic art of the late
Munich) may be regarded as a 'limit-case', insofar as it stretches and eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
expands supposition as to how the conjunction of pose and format again in twentieth-century art, it appears
that a usc of metaphors and similes in
associated with Christ the Saviour is to be interpreted.24- In Italy Andrea
visual form stands midway between a
del Sarto's so-called Portrait of a Sculptor (1517-18, National Gallery, language of signs and an imagery that
London) serves as an example, insofar as the props there, of rectangular carries an alkgoriu.ll kind of force.
block or book and table, appear to add nothing to the identification of the I9- This threefold categorization was
developed by Mark Ros.kill for Tl'lllh flllll
subject apart from the implication that they carry of a commanding Falslhood in V'ISIUil lmag11 (Amherst:
physical presence, akin to that of Michelangelo's Prophets on the Sistine University of Massachusetts Press, I983)
Ceiling.25 as background to the discussion there of
the workings of a kind of truth in visual
In the third category, the use of a deliberate archaism ofpresentation form that can be termed 'metaphorical'.
likewise represents a limit-case, as seen in the case ofjan Mostaert's Abel 110- Sec on this subject Ernst Gombrich,
van der Couster with the Emperor Augustus's Vision (c. 1515, Brussels). The 'Giotto's portrait of Dante', Burlm,trm
effect there of the 'staging' seems to be to give the whole painting a MtJga.tine, I !II (I979), pp. 47I-483· The
commentary that the image incites in
precious old-fashioned look, so that the representation of a visionary such cases has a functional as wc11 as
experience in the background belonging to an older devotional tradition exegetic role where symbolism is
has to be reconciled with the contemporary costume and features ofvan concerned because it brings the image
into relation to the setting in which it
der Couster.26 In all of these examples, denotation and connotation, the appears (a particular building or room
presentational and the referential, tend to split apart from one another; and its usc), as well as relating it to other
they no longer operate in harmonious alliance for communicative components of the surface on which it
appears (typically, the frame). The
purposes. mMiium of transmission may also serve
Insofar as cases such as these did not have too unsettling an impact on functionally, as in the example of
the accustomed patterns of relationship between viewer and portrait embroidered copies of the interior of van
Eyck's Ghent altarpiece ordered by Philip
image, their effect was to introduce into the 'figurative' operations of of Burgundy for the Order of the Golden
portraiture a vividness that might take by surprise, or a pungency that Flcccc in the I440B Gcfrrey C. Smith,
played upo~ ~n incompleteness in the viewer's responses. These are Collcgc Art Association paper,
qualities also .to be found in an effective metaphor or simile; it may extend Washington DC, I979).
11 I - More examples of portraits of the
perception in a manner that could not be anticipated from the component second sort are to be found in Italy; those
elements. Contemporaneously, however, certain practices were also in the North (except for very simple
developing in the creation of symbolic portrait images which, to a more attributes such as a ring on the finger)
verge towards the third category,
extreme degree and in more positively directed fashion, represent a suggesting that the North was in
revision or revitalization of the accepted modalities. To describe these in principle more oriented towards 'simile'.

7
 22 - The overlapping between categories
that is already found within the fifteenth
century also becomes more pronounced,
in the sense that intermediate or hybrid
categories arc deliberately created.
23 - For this elegy (first published in
1558), sec Mark Roskill, Dolct's A11tino
and V11111titu& Art Thlory ofthl CiruJu•ctmtD
(New York: New York University Press,
1g68), pp. 263f., where a reference of
1604 to a miniature version of the Louvre
portrait, preserved in Mantua, is noted.
While there is no treatment to date of
'keepsake' portraits more generally, in
this category belong, from early
sixteenth-century Italy, a miniature of a
man attributed to Raphael (Estate of
Lord Clark) and the small format portrait
of a man that is shown being held up by
the subject in the portrait of the lady by
Licinio now in the Castello Sforzesco,
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Milan (information kindly supplied by
John Shearman.)
24- The suggestions of Erwin PanofSky
on this subject (Tizl Lifl and Art ofAlbr«ht
Diim [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971],
p. 43) arc simply indicative that the
doctrine of the Imitation of Christ in
one's life was taken literally then, and
that the conception may also imply a
mystical identification of the artist as
creator with God. It seems that it was not
Diircr's way here to enforce either
reading, or indeed any specific
interpretation of that kind.
Figure 1. Bernardo Corio, Patria HistDria
(Milan, 1503), frontispiece. (By
permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University.)
8 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
terms which bear equivalence to the workings of metaphor and simile in
language requires going back to the explanation given earlier of how it
should be that metaphor and simile possess the potential of novelty and of
a genuine inventiveness. The principles that were identified there for this
purpose were a principle of displacement, from one context or sphere of
operation to another, and a principle of collocation, whereby the yoking
together of different elements sets up tension or outright contradiction
between them.
While these two principles entail a certain degree of overlap, tension
and contradiction are more appropriate to metaphor, because of its direct
and concrete juxtaposition of images; while displacement is more
appropriate to simile, because there the relevance of imported imagery to
subject may be more subtly and incrementally worked out. Defined
theoretically in this way, the difference between metaphor and simile can
be applied to both literary and visual images equally.
In early sixteenth-century portraits the workings of these principles are
not only found in the interaction of the different elements of the image.
They also extend to functional and exegetic aspects of portraiture such as
commemorative roles or integrated passages of text. This suggests the
prime reason that those principles are to be found at work visually, as we
shall see, in prints prior to their appearance in paintings, taking the form
of book illustration in Italy, and of pamphlets, tracts or independent
sheets in Germany.2 7 In line with the widening distribution of such
printed images and the corresponding call for a greater accessibility, the
'concept' or signification embodied in them would be extended or echoed
by the text appended, and reiterated or amplified in the instructional
character of the publication as whole; whereas in the case of paintings
and their more elite audience, the relevant 'text' would be more likely to
be an independent expression of the content residing in the image.
The full-page portrait which serves as the frontispiece to Bernardo
Corio's Patria Historia, published in Milan in I 503, is an image of the
author at work in his study, pen in hand (figure I) .2a This is accompanied
there by a full-page figure of Virtue in a similar frame, holding a shield
with his arms on it, and repeated a second time later in the volume, where
Corio's Vitae Caesarum begin. Whatever physiognomic resemblance may
reside in the facial features given to him, Corio is identified additionally
by the book he is engaged in writing or copying; for the volume before him
on the lectern and the one above are identified as parts of this History by
the Latin words imprinted in capitals on one of the companion volumes
on the shelf behind, declaring the topic of consideration to be 'Milan
founded by the Gauls'. The use of an architectural surround, including
pilasters either side, represents a device that had appeared quite
commonly in Italian art of the later fifteenth century, as for example in
the Piccolomini Library in Siena. In the frontispiece, the room-space in
which the figure sits and the action that he is engaged in performing are
endowed with spatio-temporal consistency as well as with the suggestion
of a particular moment in time. The implication of the surround is
therefore of an architectural aperture, identified at its most forward-
projecting points with the white of the page, through ·which we look at a
space beyond, the enclosed study-room of the author. Consistency of this
 kind, including a framing 'window' onto the scene, was maintained in 25- See Sydney J. Freedberg, Arulr~a d1l
Sarto, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Italy throughout the fifteenth and on into the early sixteenth centuries.29 uP, Ig6s), 1, p. 46 and 11, PP· , 9r.,
That respect is given to this consideration here is also evident in the suggesting that while the props seem to
recession and framing of the inscribed slab or 'tablet' below. indicate a sculptor and thatJacopo
Sansovino is the obvious candidate, the
Tension, and beyond that an emergent contradiction, enter into the
face is emphatically not his. John
collocation and ordering of these component elements in the relationship Shearman, Arulr~t~ till Sarto, 2 vols
of lettering to page surface. Insofar as the decorative and heraldic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I965), I, pp.
elements here resemble those used in the ornamental bordering of I2of., identifies the object as a book, but
it seems in fact to resemble a book rather
title-pages, they, and the lettering correspondingly, attach themselves in than b1 one, to judge from both the hand
their strictly two-dimensional character to the flat surface of the page. position on it and its possible
The animal lying recumbent between the pilasters represents an continuation into the body behind the
arm and drapery.
in-between element here: as a domestic pet accompanying the author, it 26- For deliberate archaism in Italian
belongs to the room environment; while as a heraldic creature portraiture taking a different form, see F.
accompanied by an inscribed motto it belongs strictly on the surface in Zeri, 'RivedendoJacopino del Conte',
the same manner as the emblazoned lion on the shield at the bottom left. Antologia di B1ll1 Arli, 6 .(I978), pp.
II4-I2I (Portrait of a M1111, Palazzo
Indeed its very presentation seems to partake of both 'worlds' and Bianco, Genoa, possibly by Jacopo before
mediate between them. The image as a whole is correspondingly one that
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I 535). A 'reconciliation' of the kind

yokes together, in a fashion that may be termed metaphorical, on the one described also seems called for in such a
work as Giorgione's La Vlt:Chia (if taken as
hand the presence of the author behind the book (both spatially and as its a portrait of the artist's mother as well as
composer), and on the other, his presence in the book (both i~paginated a llf.lllitas image).
visually, in correspondence to the printed name on spine and title page, 27 - In narrative prints of this period,
where the theme is hard to fathom in its
and introducing what follows). exact implications - in default of any text
Fifteen years later, Pontormo, in his portrait of Cosima de' Medici that supplies a key, the lack of which
(c. 1518--20, Uffizi), provides an image in painted form that puts on record appears quite deliberate - the situation
for the viewer is correspondingly one of
the identity of a historical personage and at the same time relays, through
puzzlement, or at least appears so today.
the collocation offeatures making up the presentation, the lasting quality Examples would be, in Italy,
ofthis man's achievement (figure 2). While the space is again readable as Marcantonio Raimondi's so-called Dr~o.m
consistent overall, the chair and brightly coloured robe assert themselves, ofRIJpluul (c. I508), and in the North
Durer's so-called Dupair etching
and the hands especially project forward into light, against a flattened (c. I 5 I 5). This is not the place to consider
and dimly-coloured background. The profile presentation of the head is 'metaphor' and 'simile' as those terms
based upon an older medal ofCosimo, but enlivened at the same time in Inight apply to narrative subjects - a
topic which requires separate overall
the tenor of the gaze and expression. This gives temporality to a treatment - but it does seem clear that
component of the image that partakes of both past and present. The the Marcantonio is built around a
terms of the original commission, furthermore, coupled this image with a
pendant portrait of Cosima's son Piero. That the implied relationship
between the two was one that gave a figurative and imaginative overlay to
the purely physical and linear continuity between father and son is
indicated specifically by the broncone or 'stem' of the Medici house at the
far left here: a heraldic element brought to life, complete with inscribed
scroll, in such a way as to contrast the cut stumps and the new growth of
branches and leaves. Showing a number of operational features in
common with the portrait of Corio, then, this painting also represents a
form of 'metaphor': it vitalizes, through the play of tensions between
elements, the significance of Cosima as a personage and the way that
significance might be seen as coming out of the dead, remembered past
down into the living present.30 It seems almost ideally fitting that an
edition ofQuintilian's text had come out in Florence in 1515 and that he
had specifically brought out how in the working of metaphor 'inanimate
[things] may be substituted for animate ... or animate for inanimate' Figure 2. Pontormo, Cosinw til' Mlflit;i
(VIII.6. 10). (Florence: Uflizi).

9

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Figure g. Anonymous, Marlin Lutlwr as 11.
Monk with 11. Do'IJI, c.I5110, woodcut,
German (London: British Museum).
contradiction or tension between its
component clements, and that the Diirer
entails an cft"cct like that ofdisplacement
in the seeming psychological and
iilteractive disrclation ofits figures from
one another. It may further be suggested
that a basic operational key to the reading
of such images is to be found in popular
prints of somewhat earlier date: in the
case of the Marcantonio, ones that are
built around a conflict of opposing forces,
that is visually enacted in terms of 'light'
and 'dark' values and/or the inversion of
expectations; in the cases of the Diirer, in
prints where the visual e~bodiment of
'as' relationships - repr~;~t:nting analogies
bctwccn one thing and another- is
extended so that each image is both itself
and something else at the same time, e.g.,
men may be shown as 'hybrids' in this
tradition (part beast or part monster), or
alternatively a sheepfold may represent
the Church, or a ship the world of
foolishness. What happens
correspondingly in the scene plays upon
that duality: as if what is told in serial
form in successive images, in another
tradition within popular prints, thereby
became capable of being compressed into
one image.
118 - Basic information about this print is
to be found in Harvard College Library,
Department of Printing and Graphic
Arts, Ct~.ttdogru ofthl Books II.IUI M11.1Weripts;
P11.rt II, ltt.dian Sixlmlth-Cmtuty Books, vol.
I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard uP, 1974),
with catalogue by Ruth Mortimer, no.
IO MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
North of the Alps at this time a principle of operation is to be found that
is akin to the workings of simile: that of displacement from one context or
sphere of operation to another. It is a related principle insofar as it affects
the way in which the interdisposition of components is apprehended. It
also bears upon the rational consistency and integration of the spatial
environment shown. But it differs in its workings in seeming more
arbitrary at first encounter, yet in picking up justification for its
factitiousness in a more extended way. Again it appears to have its
inception in print form and specifically in popular prints in which the
contribution of a text or inscription is a built-in aspect of the overall
presentation. An example from around 1520 is to be found in those
propagandistic images of the Reformation which show Luther as inspired
by the Holy Spirit by depicting him in his monastic robe and holding a
book, with the addition of the dove representing the Holy Ghost over his
head (figure 3).31 In the example illustrated here, which is an
independent coloured woodcut (dated 1520, British Museum), the
spatial presentation is not consistent in the manner indicated as
characteristic of art south of the Alps. An architectural niche is included
to the rear, with the receding lines of its capitals in perspective, but
what lies beyond the niche is specified only as an undifferentiated black
mass. Though Luther's body seems to occupy space with its mass, it
is not a space that conforms either in depth or in relative scale to the space
of the niche beyond. Similarly, though the inscribed tablet at the base
presents itself as the front side of a ledge on which the book rests,
there is no definition of the depth that it has in relation to Luther's
lower body.
In fact this section of the print, with its inscription in.,Latin identifying
the image as one of Luther as an Augustinian monk of Wittenberg, is
really like an attached label that has been displaced to within the print.
The niche had been used in previous centuries as a backdrop to the
representation of Evangelists and theologians, from which sphere of
operation it is displaced to here, to assist in the registration of Luther's
theological gifts and saintly proclivities; and the dove itself, which is the
explicit token of divine inspiration in the iconography of the saints and
Church Fathers, has been added in this case on an extra block. Later
variants of this imagery, with other related elements such as the nimbus
of sainthood, show in many differing forms and with the reinforcement of
the texts, how the force of the displacement was directed towards
affirming the way Luther could be seen as an instrument of divine
purpose.
To carry this idea further in the realm of Northern painting, we turn to
Holbein whose first portraits fall in the same decade as Pontormo's
Cosimo. T~e.concerns that have been set out in this section, with literary
theory and with the figurative aspects ofNorthern and Italian portraiture
in the fifteenth century, come together here with the conditions governing
portraiture in the North at the start of Holbein's career.
lli HOLBEIN'S PORTRAITS CONSIDERED AS SIMILES
Hans Holbein's early production, which began in Basel around 1514, was
one that encompassed both paintings - with a major role given to
 portraits - and_ prints, including page-designs for books. As a direct I37· We are grateful toMs Mortimer,
Rare Book Librarian at Smith College,
consequence of contacts with contemporary humanists and scholars, it who is working on author portraits in
also included an exposure to the arguments and topoi of classical authors sixteenth-century books, for directing us
and a knowledge of the humanists' own literary productions, including to this image.
119- This is true even when the demands
their work as editors. of spatial integration and synchronism
The 1519 portrait of Boniface Amerbach, one of the leading humanists necessitate ingenious improvisations; our
of Basel, includes a tablet hanging from a tree branch which is inscribed colleague Iris Cheney supplied excellent
examples of what happens here.
with a pair of Latin couplets, praising the truthfulness ofthe representa- 30- This account is based directly on
tion; below that there appears the signature 10. HOLBEIN DEPINGEBAT that of Sydney J, Freedberg, Painting of
('Johannes Holbein painted this'), along with the subject's name and the 1M High RmaissatU:I ill Rome IJ1IIi Flom!u
calendar date (figure 4). Inasmuch as the couplets are by Amerbach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard uP, xg6x), I,
pp. 5119-530.
himself, there is a displacement at work here: from the separate sphere of 3I- Tlris example is taken from R. W.
Latin verse production, or from the context of book production and the Scribner, For 1M Salr.• ofSimpll Folk:
printed page, into the landscape setting of the portrait. Such displace- Popular Proptmgada for 1M Gmntm
&jorml.ltio11 (Cambridge: CUP, Ig8I), ch,
ment is an identifying feature of simile, according to the account given in I, 'Images of Luther, I5I9-I5!Z5', pp. x,C.
the last section. More specifically it is akin to the introduction of the and fig. 8, where its imagery is discussed
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tablet in the print discussed above showing Luther as a monk. But it is in detail. See also his Appendix,
cataloguing all other depictions of Luther
more 'free and detached' - to pick up a pair ofterms that Quintilian had of this sort that could be found (nos.
used to define one of the relationships of simile to subject (VIII.3. 77)- in 8-x4). The representation of Luther as St
the way in which it is incorporated into the setting and serves as an Jerome by Master WS is a fine example
which he does not discuss.
expedient for identifying the subject of the portrait. Included and
juxtaposed on the same surface, the signature recording Holbein's
·authorship associates him and Amerbach together in the role of

-~..----
.....<
.1·'-
Figure 4· Hans Holbein, Bomfou
AIM'bacl&, I5I9 (Basel: Kunstmuseum
Basel).

II

32- The tablet reads in full: PICTA LICET
FACIES VI/VAE NON CEDO SED INSTAa/SUM
DOMINI JUSTIS NO/BILE LINEOLIS/OCTO IS
DUM PERAGIT/TPIETH ('tpL~] SIC
GNAVITER IN ME/ID QUOD NATURAE
EST/J!:JU'RIMIT ARTIS OPUS/BON.
AIIORBACCHIUM/IO. HOLBEIN
DEPINGEBAT/A.M. D. XIX. PRID. EID.
OCTOBR. (Although a painted face, I do
not yield to the living one, but am a true
likeness in noble lines of my Lord. AB he
passes through his twenty-fourth year,
what in me belongs to nature is actively
expressed by the workings of art.
[followed by the names of subject and
artist and the date.]) For Amberbach's
authorship of the couplets, see Alfred
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Hartmann, Dil A'tMrbodi-Komsporuim;:.
(Basel: Verlag der Univcrsitii.its-
bibliothek, I943), II, pp. I93f. n. I, citing
a ms. page on which he composed these
lines.
33 - Scribner, Popular Propagrmda, fig. 23.
34- Editions of I52I and I527, Cologne,
followed by the Basel edition of 1529.
35- Sec E. Jex-Blake and K. Scllcrs, 1"111
Elder Pliny's Chapms on 1M History of Art
(London, 18g6), p. Io6, n. 5, further
identifying it as a proverb which recurs
from early times in a variety of forms.
Their translation is used here and
subsequendy.
36- The opening words of the distich, Ilk
•go lotwus Holblin, do not appear to scan
as they should for the opening of a
hexameter. Heckschcr 'Holbein's portrait
of Erasmus', pp. I3?-I38, who gives 'lam
... crit ... crit' as the second line,
proposed Olpeiru in place of Holblin here;
a possible alternative is to suppose that a
word got omitted owing to Holbein's lack
of familiarity with Latin scansion.
I2 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
composers. At the same time it constitutes a cross-link within the imagery
between tablet-on-tree and portrait-likeness. Both of these testify to
Holbein's consummate skill in this sphere, and so parallel in visual form
the thrust of Amerbach's couplets.32
Holbein would no doubt have come to know, during the years that
followed, German images of Luther like the one discussed and would
have recognized in them an affinity with what has been described here in
the portrait of Amerbach. His own contribution to pro-Lutheran
propagandistic imagery, an independent print of1523 showing Luther as
the German Hercules, implies as much, in that it uses again- here to
identify the theme- the motif of the tablet, inscribed in Latin, hanging on
a tree.33 In reading Quintilian's text when it came out in Germany,34 he
or his humanist friends might also have recognized a certain kinship
between the linkage of a figure and tablet, and the characterization of
'reciprocal representation' in simile, involving the placement of ·the
different elements of the simile displayed 'before our very eyes ... side by
side' (VIII.3. 79). But if so, rather than serving as the basis for any kind of
a programme projecting humanist ideas in the presentation of the sitter, it
provided a way of using attributes which could link the different
components of the imagery vividly and suggestively with one another,
without necessarily conveying any overall and consistent sense of
personal character or psychology. From here on, and especially in
England, Holbein would use in the majority of his portraits only a few
selected objects and those of particular kinds: flowers, animals, jewels,
tokens of office and printed pages or inscribed papers. These are not
(whatever Holbein's instructions might have been) used in a uniform way
throughout his oeuvre to comment upon the subjects' status and
personality. Rather from the beginning they go with what might seem to
be purely decorative aspects of the environment. Like those elements,
they are almost more pungent than the sitter's own pose and attitude in
conveying a sense of being in the world.
By the time that he came to do his first dated portrait of Erasmus, that
of 1523 (Longford Castle, Ganz 34), Holbein was certainly familiar with
another classical text that was much discussed and quoted in humanist
circles, the elder Pliny's chapters on the history of art. The inscription on
that portrait, in Holbein's own hand, records his authorship in distich
form. In its second line it paraphrases words attributed to Zeuxis in
Pliny's account of his art: invisurum aliquem facilius quam imitaturum
('another may carp more easily than he may copy', XXXV, 62-64). The
form of the paraphrase, Non facile ullus/Tam micki mimus erit quam micki
momus erat, follows, in fact, the Greek that Pliny was transposing into
Latin: J.tC.OJ.t~OE'taC 't'Ls HWJ..ov ~ J.tLJ.t~OE'taL, a saying attributed by two
other authorities, Plutarch and Hesychus, to Apollodorus.35
No doubt it was Erasmus who assisted Holbein over this paraphrase.36
For a direct link between Holbein, Erasmus and Pliny which has not been
pointed to in this connection is that Erasmus was either working or about
to start work on his edition ofPliny, which would be published in Basel by
Johannes Frobenius in 1525, with the title Historia Mundi. Erasmus'
preface to that edition cites the immortal fame belonging to the
architectural monuments and sculptures of antiquity in order to suggest
 the usefulness and influence of Pliny's work as a thesaurus. The Preface
goes on to use the analogue ofpaintings for the continuous novelty that 37- C. Plinii Sccundi ... Historia Mundi,
ed. Desidcrius Erasmus, (Basel, I525),
they offer to the beholder's eye . It also makes use of Apelles' paintings of pp. 22-23. The initial H which comes at
Venus as an example of how the work of a divine craftsman needs to be the start of this preface is one of those
continuously repaired with due modesty rather than in a form which designed by Holbein and used in different
corrupts the original.37 Among the marginal glosses in the edition itself, printed books: sec on the subject of these
letter designs, W. A. Schmid, 'Holbein's
which are few and mainly textual, there is to be found a citation in Greek Tatigkeit fUr die Baseler V erleger',
of the trope attributed to Zeuxis.38 jahrbuch fkr lcOniglich Jmrusischm
By the later 1520s Pliny's praise of ar.tists who had achieved an K1111Stsammlwtgm, 20 (I Bgg), pp. 233-262,
and also H. Koegler, Ht111S Holblin fkr
astonishing convincingness in the depiction of still life objects begins to .Jiml"'· Dil Bil,d, cnn G.bltbuch HortuliiS
find a parallel in the extreme versimilitude and surpassing degree of Animal (Basel: Schwabe, r943).
finish with which Holbein renders such inanimate elements as books and
architectural features as well as costumes and drapery. That there may be
a specific echoing of Pliny's account in Holbein's creative practices is
suggested by the way in which the double portrait of Thomas Godsalve and
his Son john, dated 1528 (Dresden, Ganz 49) juxtaposes figures related by 38- Bk. XXXV, cap IX (p. 6rg).
consanguinity so as to bring out the kinship between them. According to
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Pliny, a painting in Rome that was let into the wall of the Council
Chamber consecrated by Augustus in the Comitium caused one to
'admire the mutual resemblance between a young man and his aged
father, although the difference of age is not lost' (XXXV.28),39 and the 39- Bk. XXXV, cap. 1111 in the I525
elder Godsalve has correspondingly written down his own age, 4 7, on the edition (p. 6r4).
sheet of paper over which his pen stands poised. Similarly the portrait of
the astronomer Nikolaus Kratzer (Louvre, Ganz 48) which is also from
1528 includes a sheet ofpaper on the table on which the subject's age, 41,
and the year of execution are shown in the process of being recorded,
together with a testimony to the lifelikeness of the rendition. The words
used there, imago ad vivam effigiem expressa, together with that tempora~
specificity are reinforced by the fact that the astronomer is in the process
of finishing work on a portable sundial (used for charting time) by
calculating the hours before adding the gnomons to its dials. Other
instruments that are used for solar computation appear on the shelf and
wall to the rear. While alluding to Kratzer's occupation these objects can
also be seen as recalling Pliny's praise of Apelles' portraits as 'such
perfect likenesses that a physiognomist ... was able to tell from the
portraits alone how long the sitter had to live or had already lived'
(XXXVI.88).40 The issue of taking an exact measure in or oftime links 40- Bk. XXXV, cap. X in the I525
this commendation to what Kratzer does, and also applies reflexively to edition (p. 62r).
Holbein's act of situating his subject accurately in time.
Holbein's practice as a miniature painter, which also bears some
relevance to the workings of simile in his portraiture, forms a sideline to
his career and does not begin until later, around 1535. At that time the
circumstances of his second stay in England gave occasion for him to
produce, over the next five or six years, a small number of these portraits
of members of the Royal Court. But the operative point for present
purposes is that he appears to have learnt the basic technique- oflimning
on vellum or wood in a circular format- from Lucas Hornebolte, a
member of the Flemish school of manuscript illumination. Hornebolte
had been brought over to England by Henry VIII around 1525, so that
Holbein would have come to know of his practice during his first visit
 4-1 - See on this subject Roy Strong,
'From manuscript to miniature', TM
English Miniaturr, exh. cat. (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1g81), pp. 29-41, with colour
illuatrationa for both artists.
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4-2 - For Holbein as a calligrapher, see
the identification by Otto Picht
('Holbein and Kratzer as collaborators',
BKrliJigton Magru:.W, 11.4, (194-4-),
pp. 134--139) of his contribution of
decorated initials to a treatise on
astronomy, Bodleian Library, Oxford,
MS. Bodley 504-·
·43 - Typical German or Netherlandish
medallion portraits of the time give the
date, sitter's age and motto and, also
invariably, either his or her name,
surrounding or flanking both head
(obverse) and heraldic device (reverse). A
portrait like that of Brian Tuke (National
Gallery, Washington) has many of these
features compressed into a single image,
along with references to more timely
events in the sitter's life; see John Oliver
Hand, 'The portrait of Sir Brian Tuke by
Ham Holbein the Younger', Slluliu in 1M
History ofArt, 9 (1g8o), pp. 33"""4-9·
Holbein thus seems both to play with and
against the precise but timeless, encoded
quality of the the medallion.
14 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
there in 1526-28. 4 1 In using the combination of a blue bice background
and transparent tones with powdered gold highlights Holbein follows
Hornebolte technically. But the German hardly follows his Flemish
predecessor at all in presentational terms. In Hornebolte's extant
miniatures from around 1525-26, the use of a framing border gives the
effect oflooking through a shallow aperture at the sitter, but the relation
of figure to space so defined is not consistent as an extension of the
shoulders creates a kind of'horizon line' all the way across, while the blue
background takes its place in floating fashion above that line, rather than
beyond it. In Holbein's miniatures, in contrast, there is more a kinship to
what a mirror image of the sitter, on a tiny scale, would be like: the
frequent inclusion of the hands, the indications of shading and
suggestions of spatial curvature at the limits of the format, and the turn of
the head and direction of the gaze in relation to the expanse of blue
behind all imply this. Hornebolte's production therefore provides a
starting point only, on the technical side, for Holbein's practice of this
craft. And insofar as Holbein's suggestion of a mirror image parallels
what would actually be seen in the use of a convex mirror to achieve
miniature scale, what he does here fits Quintilian's characterization of an
alternative kind of simile to the 'free and detached' kind: one which is
'attached to the subject' in a relationship of exact resemblance
(VIII.3·77).
The use of inscriptions in gold lettering, recording the sitter's age,
provides an interesting extension of the concept of simile here, though
there is no way ofknowing if it developed before Holbein's second stay in
England, and if so how much earlier. The gold letters appear on either
side of the sitter's head, as if they were behind the neck and shoulders.
This gives them what may be termed a heraldic or iconic look. Certainly
the lay-out of the letters and numerals, formalized down to the smallest
particulars of shaping and arrangement, is in keeping with the concrete
and minute particularity found in the rendering of hair or jewellery or
fabric materials.42 But the kind of suspended existence that these
inscriptions lead, midway between background and surface, also makes
for a contrast with the overall spatial consistency that is implicit in Italian
portraits of the time, such as Parmigianino's Self-Portrait of 1524
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 9 inches in diameter). In Holbein's
case, the effect is that his miniatures bear a resemblance to the look of
portrait medals: a precedent, alongside miniature painting, for his
practice here but also a justification, by analogy, for the inventiveness
with which lettering is deployed. 4-ll
* * *
In the ways that have now been described - early practices of
displacement, humanistic contacts and access to the Flemish tradition of
miniature painting and German and Flemish medals- the novelty of
Holbein's position on the Northern European scene already declares
itself. It is a novelty that is paradigmatic for the application of the term
'simile' to Northern portraiture. Like Pontormo's image of Cosima, it
entails inventive play with a suppositional kind of space and devices
interspersed within it, which include the use of inscribed words and
 heraldic lettering. But the force of evocation is more spread out within the
image, or diffused across a group of elements, than is the case in that
Italian example. It also pushes to the fore the implication of Holbein's
own pictorial mastery. With the same kind of impact that a striking simile
has, Holbein's imagery sets up internal relationships in these cases that
are both disarmingly artful and ultimately self-justifying.
Further extensions of the same principles are to be found in the objects
and texts included in Holbein's full-scale portraits ofthe 1530s and later,
and in the forms of presentation adopted. Even where the number of
objects becomes considerably larger, the linkages between them operate
on the same principles as when they are fewer: they neither define
character nor, contrary to what has been expected, do they add up to a
symbolic programme with a humanist basis. In the 1532 portrait ofthe
German merchant, Georg Gisze, the subject is identified by the
appearance of his signature on the cupboard doors and surrounding wall 44- It is not clear if they are engraved or
-inscribed; both possibilities appear to
at the left and his accompanying motto Nulla sine merore voluptas ('no apply equally, depending on whether one
pleasure without grief), both set out there in a script which has the same
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takes it to be Gisze or Holbein who is

kind of ornamental and seemingly suspended character as the lettering on responsible for putting them there. It is
Holbein's miniatures (figure s).44 Insofar as it marks out a general worth remarking here that Holbein's
involvement with caligraphy discussed in
principle of existence that attaches in a personal way to Gisze's life and note 42 dates, most probably, from his
character, and has been displaced from a heraldic context into the room first stay in England.

- ,R'.','.'-
Figure 5· Hans Holbein, G.org Gis(l, I 532
- -
(Berlin-Dahlem: Staatliche Museen
·~tf:'T PreuBischer Kulturbesitz).

..,...,.,"
'.«;

. -;.~~
:."'If~-·~·_·~-
--
't "

' '~~I'?

45 - A full identification of the individual
objects shown is to be found conveniently
in Gemildegalerie Berlin, Katalog d6r
Gmnaltllgaum, ausglltllllln G.mild• rJu
l~JBjalarluwJms (Berlin-Dahlem: 1975),
p. 204, no. 586. We are grateful to Dr
Erich Schleier of that museum for
assistance in this connection, and for
passing on the suggestion of a colleague
that the objects in the metal box here are
Downloaded by [New York University] at 16:58 28 April 2015
in fact not coins, as might readily be
assumed from their appearance, but wax
plates for the sealing of letters.
46 - For this identification of the two
plants and explanation of their pl"Cience,
see Deborah Markow, 'Hans Holbein's
steelyard portraits reconsidered',
Wallraf-R~-Jahrbudl, 40 (1978), pp.
4!1-44· She also makes reference to the
association of rose~nary with
remembrance and that of carnations with
marriage portraits.
47- Hermann Freytag ('Das Bilduis
eines Danzigers, von Hans Holbein
gemalt', Zritschrift rJu wutprn.ssischm
Gut:hichtsrJmills, 40 (18gg), pp. 107ft".)
records that Gisze was to get married
three years later. Other portraits which
include carnations are Ganz nos. 93
(Simon ofComwall) and 78.
48- In full: ALs"YXLOv [sic, for ACatixov]
in imtlgi1llm Gtorgii Gysmnii/Ista r~flrl ;ultus,
pam cmais, imago G.orgi/Sic oculos ;ioos sic
MIHt illl giiiiiS/AntUJ utalis sua xx:Jriiii/AntUJ
domini 1532. The opening error in
transcription is one that implies an
ignorance of Greek on Holbein's part.
49 - Dm lrSt;.fJflllfl j~rgm Gis~• to Lrmdm in
mg•ltmt mynm brodlr to luDulln. The names
on the remaining letters are those of
Hans Stotten, Tomas Bands and
Je[u?]rgen, merchants of Basel, Holbein's
own home town.
I6 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
in which he works, the motto forms an appropriate verbal counterpart to
the great variety of personal and professional objects with which the
merchant is shown. These include scissors and a pair of scales which are
related by tradition, and in the same spirit as the motto, to the exercise of
decision and judgment in human affairs.
The objects in question also include ones that have been brought into
this context from different far-off places - an ornamented sphere for
holding thread with a German inscription on it, a Venetian glass vase, an
Anatolian carpet used as a table covering. 45 It is appropriate that two of
the plants which are in the vase should be Thale Cross and Good King
Henry, corresponding to the subject's being in London now to ply his
trade and the presence there of Henry vm's court, with which Holbein
himself as master-painter was soon to be associated.46 The passage of
time is equally brought in, by an introduction of elements that are
dispersed through the presentation in different places and roles rather
than directly juxtaposed. A clock lies on the table-top with the hinged
metal flap in its side opened, giving access to the key for winding it; its
hand points towards the hands that have paused in the process of opening
a newly-received letter. The carnations in the vase, which are frequent in
marriage portraits and no doubt here are meant to introduce proleptic-
ally the sitter's marriage in the near future, go with a sprig of rosemary
which is at the centre of the bouquet. 4 7 In its traditional association with
memory, that herb links up with the prominently-placed marker inserted
as a reminder into the large bound volume that lies on the shelf above. On
this shelf and below are also boxes for holding business papers, the
smaller ledger at the upper right identified as such by the clasp on its
back, and various bills or invoices, representing business that is in hand
or is to receive attention imminently. All these objects bring to mind as
well Holbein's own capacity to supply a likeness memorializing a living
person in a way that can serve as an effective substitute for, or counter to,
the mere remembrance of his appearance. As the inscription from Virgil's
Aeneid on another of the Steelyard portraits, that of Derich Berek ( 1536,
Metropolitan Museum, New York, Ganz 87), affirms, olim meminisse
juvabit (Aeneid I, 203): 'one day you will have joy to remember' [how the
person was then].
It is however the clearly-legible writing on the various pieces of paper
that most fully gives shape to the workings of simile here. The paper
pinned to the rear wall announces a distich on the subject of Gisze's
portrait, in what must be taken as Holbein's own handwriting, and the
Latin couplet that constitutes the next two lines is again an encomium to
the lifelikeness of the portrayal, referring particularly to the rendering of
the eyes and cheeks, and followed in the last two lines beneath by the age
of the sitter and the year ofexecution. 48 The letter that is in the process of
being opened is addressed on its outside, in German and in a clearly quite
different handwriting, to 'the excellent Gisze, in London, England, by the
hand of my brother'. 49 Other papers further back on that side of the room
have the names of merchants in Basel on their outsides. The remaining
objects are all ones that pertain to the writing, sealing and sending of
letters. Gisze came from a family of merchants in Cologne which had
moved to Danzig. Thus the displacement of the letter that he holds from
 its source of origin, in Germany, into the context in which Holbein was
able to fashion his consummate likeness, follows the path of the letter
from sender to recipient, in London; while the likeness ofGisze that will
be made available to his family and associates in his absence will reverse 50- The portrait of Giaze is generally
accepted as being one of those Holbein
that movement. 50 The image is further 'sealed' by Gisze's own signature did on commission for the merchants of
on it, accompanying the records that its surface also carries ofits time and the Steelyard, members of the Hanseatic
place of origin. League residing in London. Another of
the portraits generally assigned to the
In The Ambassadors of the following year, 1533, also done in London, the group, that of Hermann Wedigh of
two subjects, Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur de Polisy and Georges de Selve, Cologne from the same year, 1532, has
later Bishop ofLavaur, are shown together in tribute to their association been shown to have reached Cologne
as diplomatic envoys from France (figure 6). In this capacity they· both within seven years from the time of its
execution (see H. Krummacher, 'Zu
visited England in that year. Again there is the signature,joannes Holbein Holbeins Bildnissen Reinischer
pingebat, and the date on the shadowed part of the floor, to go with the StalhoJkaufleute',
ages of the sitters at the time that are inscribed on the sword scabbard in WGllraf-Richart<:-jahrbucla, 25 (1g63), pp.
181-1911), thereby suggesting (as
one case and the inside edge of a book in the other. Legible writing is also indicated by Markow, 'Holbein's
used, on the surface of the terrestrial globe and the pages of the open steelyard portraits', p. 40) that the
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books that lie between the two men, to indicate what may be a common portraits as a group were made to be sent
back to the towns from which the sitters
interest that these men have, in mercantile exploration and Lutheran came. Thus they would have existed for
devotional hymns. 51 And there is a practice of displacement here too, in the benefit of their families and/or
richer and more variegated forms. The solar and calendrical instruments associates, rather than being presented to
grouped on the upper segment of the table have been transferred into this the Guild in London to hang in their hall,
as had been supposed previously. (See A.
context from the portrait of Nikolaus Kratzer, where they belong to an B. Chamberlain, Hflfll Holbrin tJr. Yoraag,.
astronomer and relate to what he is occupied in doing; they include, from [London, 1913], II, p. 13, for that idea.)

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Figure 6. Hans Holbein, n. Ambassadtm,

1533 (London: National Gallery).

17
 5I- Basic information about the sitters
and the particular objects included here
is conveniently brought together in
Michael Levey's Nab.ontJl Gallery
Catalog~Us, 1M Gmt1t111 School (London:
National Gallery, rg5g), pp. 47-54. The
books arc identified there as the C.ystliclw
G.stmgbiicl&llin ofJohann Walther, open to
a musical setting of one of Luther's
hymns, and the Kn./f'tnatms lUduumg of
Peter Appian. The terrestrial globe
reproduces that ofJohann Schiiner from
I5113. Mercantile exploration is invoked
in the combination of a book on account
keeping, on one side, with a view of the
globe which has Europe in the centre and
includes Africa and the Near East; while
the combination on the other side of the
hymn book (scored for voice only) with a
lute and cases for flutes may similarly
imply a concern with singing and its
Downloaded by [New York University] at 16:58 28 April 2015
instrumental accompaniment.
511- It comes from Abbot Ware's
precinct in the Abbey. The books in
contrast already belong to the past,
having come out respectively (seen. 5I)
in I5114 and I5117.
53 - Though earlier interpretations have
contributed to the account here -
especially those of Mary Hervey, Holb•m's
Ambassadors, 1M Pictuu arul the Mm
(London, rgoo) and of Levey, 1M Gmtltl1l
ScluJol, who expresses reservations about
the presence of symbolism, understood in
strictly emblematic terms - this
distinction is not one that has previously
been made as such. It is not one that
would in any case be easily recognized
within the traditional terms of discussion,
iconographic and stylistic, of the
workings of symbolism.
54- The term 'reflexive', as used here for
the process of portrait painting and the
act of representing itself, has been taken
from recent discussion of other paintings,
most notably Velasquez's Las Mmiruu.
55 - The last figure of the date is
uncertain. The version reproduced here
(Ganz rgo) is usually judged today to
have less strong claims, both in
provenance and in quality, to being the
original than the one formerly in the
Verity-Manners collection.
I8 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
left to right, a cylindrical sundial, quadrant, protractor and portable
sundial, all virtually identical in their appearance and presentation here.
The intarsia decoration of the pavement underfoot has been transposed
into this secular and courtly setting from the sanctuary of Westminster
Abbey, and is virtually identical to the original. The anamorphic skull
which occupies the lower foreground also represents a displacement,
inasmuch as it necessitates for its viewing the adoption of a totally
different point of sight from that which is entailed in the presentation of
the room and its occupants.
Very similarly to the Gisze portrait, an extended chain of reciprocal
and suggestive associations can be seen linking these differing elements to
one another. Geographic space and distance oforigin are brought in in the
shape ofthe larger globe which comes from Nuremberg, while the books
stem from other German cities, Wittenberg and Igolstadt, and the carpet
over the table is again an Anatolian one. The intarsia belongs to the world
of London, which is where the two men have met afresh. Whereas in
respect to the time ofits creation it belongs to fourteenth-century Catholic
London, the decorative and heraldic emphasis given to it here seems to
make it appropriate in a new secular context; at the same time the
religious world is still suggestively present in the background, in the form
of the crucifix partially exposed by the brocade curtain. The evocation of
time extends also to the solar instruments, which put the ages of the
subjects and their appearance in place by reference to the precise fashion
in which temporal change can be charted; to the broken lute string, which
summons up the quality of harmonious accord between the two men (as if
by lack of harmony in the world at large) that must inevitably one day be
broken, and to the presence of the death's head, intruding in oblique and
distorted fashion from an unseen netherworld beneath the pavement
decoration which is, in the Abbey sanctuary itself, that of the grave.52 The
presentation, in other words, builds upon, rather than exemplifies, how
the ambassadors understood their joint task in life, in order to impart to
the viewer a larger understanding of that task in its context of space and
time. It can include elements which make reference to differing spheres of
activity, some in the future like the reconciliation of Protestants and
Catholics, or the separation of the subjects which will occur when the
portrait and they go back to France. Rather than conveying a single,
composite programme of action, the portrait opens up such implications
by virtue of the seemingly unsettled (rather than settled) interrelations of
things in this world, encompassing the social and spiritual characteriza-
tion of the sitters. 53
An analogous implication, but of a more directly reflexive kind,54 is to
be found in Holbein's Self-Portrait dated in I542 or I543, which is known
in various versions, none of them certainly the original (figure 7).55 In
I535 Holbein had done a drawn portrait of the Frenchman Nicolas
Bourbon, who was then visiting England. That drawing (Parker 37)
served as the basis, in reverse, for the author portrait of Bourbon which
appears in his ITaLl)cryci>yELO'V, published at Lyon in I 536. The design of
the woodcut, which may well have been laid out by Holbein himself, puts
the profile head into a medallion format, within a rectangular block that
includes dolphins and Bourbon's arms on a shield (figure 8). It carries the
 Figure 7· Hans Holbein, S•lf-Pomait,
1542 (lndiannapolis, Clowes Collection).

, .

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'
,,
. _,r

Latin inscription NIC. BORBONIUS VANDOP./ANNO AETATIS XXXII/I535 in a

circular arrangement either side of the head. Distichs praising his
accomplishment in Greek and Latin are found below.56
It is in the large circular format of the I542-43 Self-Portrait that the
resemblance to a medallion (as opposed to a mirror image) becomes most
specific. Along with the inscribed lettering, giving initials and age at the
time, and a monochrome background, there is a positioning of the hands
here in relation to the border - one of them holding the tool of creation
and the other counterbalancing it - that directly echoes the Bourbon
portrait. The whole image comes to function as a simile for the artist's
own creativity; it operates freely in respect to the dimensions of space and
time as the medallion portrait did, while at the same time suggesting that
Holbein is engaged in painting this work- just as Bourbon is writing that
particular book of his. Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in contrast, in using
the traditional gesture for concealing the hand that actually paints, trrd"~ ~ 1xtr- e INc~
covers over the dimensions of space and time in which his image was . ."qJ yatf ~ re.w ...
created.
arillllio,..,.,.......,..
....Virgiliar.crGrwdiWrtu.,..

* * *
Finally, there is another classical text to consider as a stimulus to Holbein
Figure 8. [Attributed to] Hans Holbein,
in the devising of his imagery. This can also be regarded as contributing tide page to Nicolas Bourbon,
to the workings of simile there. The author is again Pliny and the llcn6crycilyELOV (Lyons, 1536), woodcut.
particular story is one that can be related to a number of Holbein's (By permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University).
portraits which include figs.
In the I 5 I g portrait of Amerbach it is a fig tree on which the inscribed 56 - For the basic information on this
tablet hangs. In the Madonna ofBurgomeister Meyer, probably done in I 526 wOOdcut, see Harvard College Library,
Department of Printing and Graphic
(some of the figures were perhaps added later or their disposition Arts, Catalog~~~ of till Books fJ1IIl MfJ1111Scripts:
reworked), the branches of a fig appear in twisting form against a Part I, Frmeh Sut.nth Cmtury Books, vol. I

I9
 Figure g. Hans Holbein, Sir Henry
Guild.ford, I 527. (Copyright reserved to
HM Queen Elizabeth u.)
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(Cambridge, MA: Harvard uP, Igfi4), with
catalogue by Ruth Mortimer, p. I48. The
view that it was designed by Holbein
himself is put forward by A. Woltmann,
Holbrin rmd SliM Zeit (Leipzig, I874-76),
I, pp. 403-407 and II, pp. I85-I86, no.
2o8. It might also be noted here that
Holbein would have known medals from
his first trip through Flanders in I 526,
such as Metsys' I5I9 medal of Erasmus.
20 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
background of blue sky; they are cut off at the framing edges or disappear
behind the arms of the elaborate architectural niche before which the
Madonna stands. In the pendant portraits of Sir Henry Guildford and his
wife Mary Wotton, done in I527 during Holbein's first stay in England
(figures 9 and 10), and in the Lady with a Squirrel (Houghton Hall,
Cholmondeley collection, Ganz 43) which is nearly enough contempor-
ary with them, the use of the motif is elaborated. There is more of an
emphasi~ on the thrust or bend of the branch as a whole and on the figs
themselves as protuberances pushing out from the stem. Here the fig
again appears against a monochrome background, but its contribution to
the definition of the setting is now more indeterminate. Although it
occupies some kind of an intermediate space between the figure and the
background, its relationship to the other elements which come just
behind the figure- curtain and rail, a detached fragment of architecture,
a perching magpie- and to the space in which the subject stands or sits
remains unclear. The same is true of its appearance in the portrait of
William Reskimer (Windsor, Ganz 7 I) from about I 532-33. Lastly in the
 Figure 10. Hans Holbein, Mary I.tllly
Guiltl.ford, 1527 (StLouis: The StLouis
Art Museum).
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57- The only specific suggestion has

been that of Markow ('Holbein's
steelyard portraits', pp. 44-47), who
I533 portrait ofDerich Born, another merchant from Cologne residing in proposed, by analogy with its appearance
in the Heller and lscnhcim altarpieces,
London, the fig occupies still more of the space behind the sitter, who here that the fig tree had an apotropaic
couches his arm on a stone ledge (figure I I). It is, then, another of function, being designed to ward off
Holbein's meticulously painted and visually intriguing still-life objects, illness and the plague and thereby assure
deriving from the natural world and, even at its most detached, relating the safe return of the sitter home.
58- One also appears in the background
back to that world through the intimations that it offers of fertility and of the Last Supp.r of 1520 (Ganz 13,
growth. But its appearance in these works has not, either in iconographic Basel), but the figs there arc less visible
or in stylistic terms, been satisfactorily explained.57 and the argument for a derivation of the
composition in general from Leonardo's
Two or three years before the presumed date of the Madonna of Last Supp.r is not so convincing as to
Burgomeister Meyer, the fig tree had been used by Holbein in a basically necessitate that Holbein had been to
similar way, in a religious context and as part of a setting of landscape Milan. For the dating of the Saint Ursula
(which carries the false date of 1522) and
and architecture. One appears, complete with trunk and figs, behind the the likelihood that it has no connection,
figure in the Saint Ursula panel painted in I523-24 (Ganz 20). 58 By that as supposed earlier, with the altar of the
point in Holbein's early career, there is the presumption that he had paid Passion in Basel, sec the review of the
a visit to Italy; and just as exposure to portraits by the Bellini and Catena evidence in the exhibition catalogue Du
Mal,.fomUu Holbrin ill Btull (Basel:
that include stone ledges, background walls with curtains and pro- Kunstmuscum Basel,Jul.-8cp. 1g6o), no.
minently placed books could have contributed to the role and emphasis 165.

21
 Figure 11. Hans Holbein, Dnich Bom,
1533. (Copyright reserved to HM Queen
Elizabeth n.)
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59- Isaiah 36.16 (corresponding to II
Kings 18.3x);joel2.22; Michah 4·4-i c£
also Haggadiah 2.19 and Zechariah 3.10.
22 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
• \ _,_. ....
· . .-
..
·~·
..-
that Holbein gives to these elements, beginning with the 1523 portrait of
Erasmus, so also knowledge of Venetian sacra conversazione paintings, by
Giovanni Bellini and his school, that include fig trees in the landscape
may help explain how Holbein came to make the linkage of fig tree and
saint. As to associations attaching to the tree: in several places in the
prophetic books of the Old Testament having one's own fig tree, to sit
under its branches or eat from, is used, together with having one's. own
vine, to denote a time of happiness, prosperity and security.59 This
denotation may apply already to the portrait of Amerbach, done at a
time of relatively settled conditions in Basel. But by 1526 the violent
disturbances of the Reformation had pushed Meyer out of his civic
position. The appropriate connotation for that time, for the presentation
of Meyer with his two wives, one dead and one betrothed, would
accordingly be one that collapsed past and future into a single image,
 evocative offamily life and of upstanding Catholic devotion. so The same 6o - See Otto Benesch, 1M Art of tM
RmaissfJIIU in Northma Europe (London,
connotation may continue to hold later on, but it does not apply nearly so I943; rev. ed., London: Phaidon, I965),
well to the portraits done in London, which have no landscape, a less · p. 73, which puts the presentation of
easily readable spatial layout and a stronger dynamic given to the Meyer into its context on these historical
lines, and Wilhelm Waetzoldt, HGtiS
rhythms of growth. This point may have some relation, if only indirectly, Holbein tM Yo1111ger, His Work and his World,
to the very different social and political conditions that Holbein found in trans. F. B. Aiken-Sneath (Zurich:
England. Scientia, I939), pp. 48-50 for Meyer's
rise to power and the circumstances of his
Now in another section of Pliny's Historia, where the properties ofthe
fall (in I 52 I, after he accepted French
fig were enumerated, a story was retailed which came out of the context of subsidies and secret pensions from the
unstable and anxious political times in ancient Rome. Cato, in this story, Pope). His fll"llt wife had died in I5II and
showed a ripe fig to the Roman Senate asking when they thought it was he had married his second the following
year. The evidence for repainting and
plucked and then, in reply to his own question told them that it was alteration of the altarpiece is summarized
plucked in Carthage 'but the day before yesterday'. A fig held in the in the Ig6o Basel catalogue (see note 58),
hand, in Pliny's words, came to show in this way 'How near Carthage was no. I55·
to the gates of Rome' (XV.2o).61 6I - Bk. XV, cap. XVIII in I525 ed., De
The story has relevance in several different ways to Holbein's later ficis genera xxix (pp. 26of.).
portraits which include fig branches, particularly that of Derich Born.
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First of all, the point that the figs in these portraits look as if they were
ready to be plucked gives a vividness and immediacy to their appearance
like that entailed in Cato's gesture. Secondly, the point that the portrait of
Born was destined, like that of Gisze, to be sent back to his home in
Germany meant that it would overcome the sense of distance and
apartness for those who saw it there; it would suggest to them, as Cato's
fig did for Carthage, that the subject of concern was not that far removed
after all. But above all, what Cato did could be thought of as a simile in
action, with a selective visual factor to it; these were what made it so
peculiarly telling. The inscriptions on the portrait of Born, in fact, bring
into the context of the presentation ver~~ reinforcements such as Cato's
words provided: the sitter's age and the year is given (as Cato gave the
length of time it had taken for the fig to be brought there); and the text on
the plinth is a Latin distich affirming that only a voice is needed to make it
seem (as Cato's accompanying comment made it seem) that a strictly
visual presence were making a direct communication.62 62 - Dericluu si IH1UIII addas ipsissi.mus hie
The effect of Cato's gesture on the Roman senate was that they sit/lum& rbJJit&s pictor f-rit a·gmitor.

immediately went out and, in a spirit offervent hostility to the threat that
Carthage seemed to pose them, saw to its destruction. On another of the
portraits of the German merchants, that ofHermann Wedigh ofCologne
from I 532 (Metropolitan Museum, New York, Ganz 65), there appears a
motto from Terence's Andria.ss It is written as a reminder in a cursive 63- Act I, sc. I, line 68. Holbein's
hand that is presumably Holbein's on a sheet that is inserted as a marker initials, 'H.H.', appear on the comer of
the book.
into a book; the latter is identified as being Wedigh's personal property,
probably used for the settling of accounts, by the HER. WED. inscribed on
its inside edge and by the bills or invoices that he holds in his hand. 64 It is fi4- An apt contrast in Italian
a simple and epigrammatic communication on the theme in point: Veritas portraiture of the time that includes
books, an inscribed text, the sitter's
odium parit (the truth breeds hate). This example thus forms one last posture and gaze and other elements
instance of the contribution of classical texts and the workings of simile in associated with his calling would be
Holbein's portraits. The animosity and belligerence which German Bronzino's Ugolino Mamlli
(Bertin-Dahlem, c.I536). The books and
merchants had experienced in London, and with which Holbein text there function as a source of
presumably identified as their official portraitist on the scene, are instruction and exposition, but this use of
translated in this way into the context of their truthful and forthright them seems to be out of key with the

23
 clcgandy aloof and reflective aspects of
the subject's appearance. A surface of
stone or marble similarly serves as a
support for book and arm, with one of its
edges running back in perspective. The
line of cloth that goes over its top slices
diagonally across it. Whereas in the
W1digh the placement of the figure behind
this surface and in relation to it remains
physically and spatially indeterminate, in
the Bronzino there is much more of an
outright tension and contradiction built
into the relation of the table top to the
figure and to the adjacent space. The
statue on its pedestal to the rear alludes
to the Martelli family's pride and interest
as collectors, but the David with the head
of Goliath used for this purpose appears
divested of any of the religious overtones
of that story or the political implications
that it carries in the tradition of
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Florentine art. It simply offers an image
of youthful sensuality and elegance of
mien to go with those qualities in the
presentation of the sitter. Where Holbein
had included sculptured clements in the
background of his portraits, they arc
invariably more decorative in role and
testify again to his mastery of rendition in
this sphere. This in turn makes a point of
the fact that the eyes ofWedigh, also
looking off to one side, arc in fact quite
con.Spicuously asymmetrical and his
expression more down to earth.
65- Sec Wactzoldt, Ht111S Holbein, p. r74,
for Cardinal Wolsey's initiation of
punitive measures against the steelyard
merchants of I5I.)-2I, and other evidence
at that time of ill-feeling toward resident
foreigners in London. We arc grateful to
W.J. Wegener for drawing our attention
to this evidence.
66 - Sec John Pope-Hennessy, Till Portrait
ill tM Rmais~ (New York: Pantheon,
r966), pp. 92-roo and rgo-r98.
67 - Sec, for instance, the following
studies: Otto Benesch Art oftM
Rmaiss~,chap.4,PP·44-6o
('Reformation, Humanism and the New
Notion of Man'); Donald Kuspit, 'Diirer
and the Lutheran image', Art ill Allllrica,
6g (I975). pp. s6-6r; Kunsthalle,
Hamburg, K.Opfl dlr Luthnoit, exhibition
catalogue (Hamburg 4 Marcb-24 April
rg8g) with an introductory essay by
Werner Hofmann.
68- The most recent, handy treatment of
the sitution in Basel is found in Carl C.
Christensen, Art ll7lll tM IUfomuJtion ill
Gmnany (Athens, OH: Ohio UP, I979),
pp. 93-IO!Z.
24 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
representation. Both the motto and the act of portrayal serve as a token of
the kind of response which the men's presence and conduct of their affairs
were in principle bound to incur.65
The particular examples of Holbein's portraits, done while at the
English court, which have been singled out for discussion are all ones
which raise questions, in the response of the viewer, as to how things
relate to one another; how the choice and disposition of objects relates to
the artist who put them there (as in the case of written texts and
inscriptions); and how the represented forms of activity relate to the
representer of them. Other examples might be given, or those that are
mentioned might be treated more fully, like Lady Mary Guildford (with
drape, pilaster and rosemary sprig) or her husband Sir Henry Guildford
(with instruments of time and measurement on his cap badge). But it
may suffice to say that if one is to speak of'symbolism' in these works, its
presence and character need to be explored in a more reflexive fonil of
analysis. It is this, finally, that the concept of simile- beyond the logic of
its transferability from literature - enables one to do.
IV CONCLUSION
According to one fairly representative view, Hans Holbein has his
professional beginnings in a humanist environment, painting portraits of
intellectuals in which the creative imagination of these men is seen as a
primary inspiration for the artist. When Holbein moves out of a humanist
circle he then finds it convenient to attach himself to the King ofEngland,
becoming the archetypal Northern European version of the Renaissance
court portraitist. 66 In this perspective the artist appears as filling one set
of patron's requirements after another. Holbein's often-remarked-upon
personal anonymity becomes an artistic anonymity, even obsequious-
ness. To supplement this interpretation we need an historical perspective
which will illuminate Holbein's own creativity and also cut across the
particular environments in which he worked.
The first halfofthe sixteenth century in Northern Europe is a period
particularly associated with the flowering of individual portraiture.
There are several general historical conditions, connected primarily with
the Protestant Reformation, that seem to have fostered this phenomenon.
Portraiture promoted those newly-sanctified secular and religious leaders
so important for the triumph of the new, as well as the preservation of the
old, faith.67 As the woodcut portrait of Luther discussed in section u of
this study showed, contemporary figures in many ways replaced, or at
least rivalled, time-honoured saints as models ofvirtue and piety.
It might be difficult to trace in much detail the importance of this
attitude for Holbein's work; he does not employ overt propagandistic
devices nor give his sitters in general the self-assertiveness that is found in
other portraits of the time (Diirer, Cranacl1, even Metsys). Yet the idea
that sixteenth-century portraiture promotes newly important contempor-
ary figures does provide a relevant backdrop for many of his images.
Faced with the perils of iconoclasm, particularly virulent when it broke
out in Basel, artists had to search for ways of promoting their talents
outside the questioned religious sphere. 68 Under these conditions, and in
 light of what was just said about contemporary leadership, portraiture
might have seemed a logical direction for many artists to take. Yet it
would be wrong to see Holbein spurred on largely by negative fears.
During his first trip to Flanders and England in I 526-28, he seems to
have repeatedly tried his hand at figure compositions.69 As Holbein 6g - Sec John Fletcher and Margaret
increasingly realized the particular power he could bring to a portrait, he Cholmondclcy Tapper, 'Ha1111 Holbein
the Younger in Antwerp and in England,
increasingly concentrated his efforts in this area. No doubt it helped that 1526-28', Apollo, n.s. 117 (1983), pp.
the new-found authority of secular as well as sacred powers accompany- 87-93. Fletcher and Tapper indicate that
ing the Reformation made that a safe, if not positively desirable, field of panels from the same tree cut in the
Netherlands in 1526 were used for the
activity. following three paintings: All•gory of thl
Holbein's particular interest in portraiture exhibits another general Old euuJ Nflll Tutammts (Edinburgh:
historical circumstance found in the early sixteenth century. That is the National Gallery of Scotland), Alkgory of
Passion (Malibu: Getty Museum), and
way in which Holbein in taking up this area of endeavour clearly tries to
Noli M1 TangiTI (Hampton Court).
breathe new life into an old, even somewhat-exhausted tradition.
Religious art in general, traditional sacred themes and stories, seem by
the late fifteenth century to have been worn rather thin; thus the need to
twist and turn (sometimes inside out) the spectator's point of view, to
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inject new interest into sacred narrative. 70 Portraiture, too, had become 70- Sec, for i1111tance, the introduction to
in many cases rather restricted in its devotional attitudes; it had in Symbols in TrtJ11Sfo77114ti1m, lCONJgraphi&
Tlurrw at thl T1m1 of thl &formation,
general, as was discussed above, reached the limit of a whole set of ideas exhibition catalogue (Princeton:
developed throughout the fifteenth century. It is certainly notable that Princeton University Art Museum, 1g6g),
few of Holbein's sitters strike traditional attitudes of piety even when they pp. 1,5-34·
hold prayerbooks or beads.
Holbein's portraits thus find their place in the general context of the
period. These historical conditions are certainly necessary to explain the
way that the images embody their times: its capitalism, humanism,
aristocracy, diplomacy, secular authority, sexuality, personal hopes and
fears, scepticism and learning, and its religious individualism. The
multi-faceted historical function which any of Holbein's portrait images
serves seems to be made possible by the artist's grasping, acquisitive
attitude to all sorts of objects, people and faces included. And of course it
is not the mere presence of these 'objects' that so intrigues us, but rather
their shifting and ambiguous relation, the power of their combination.
Focusing on the visual and intellectual intrigue of these combinations has
deliberately forced a joining of what is usually separated: the meaning of
the objects themselves and their manner or style ofpresentation. It has
also meant that the approach taken here covers simple and complex
imagery simultaneously. Whether there is one accessory object or a whole
assortment, the crucial quality seems to be the incursion of pungent and
provocative implications.
Sir Thomas More wears, in Holbein's portrait (Frick Collection) as he
apparently always did in life, the magnificent ss chain given him by his
king. 71 In the painting, the chain is executed in applied gold-leaf, flat and 71- Sec, in general, 1711 Frick Colkctio1t,
An Illrutratld Cf.lltllogw (New York:
hard, glistening on the surface. Holbein thus seems to represent both a . Princeton uP, 1g68), I, pp. 228--233; and
particular prized personal possession (attribute) and a timeless symbol of J. B. Trapp and H. S. Herbniggcn, 1711
royal privilege. There is here a tension of times, present and eternal, and a Km,'s Good SmH.IJit, Sir TlumuJs Morr,
spanning of different spheres of influence and control, giving the image a 1477/8-1535 (Ipswich, 1977), p. 31, cats.
26 and 27. Jonathan Greenberg was
resonance in time and space. In a more complex image, the group helpful in providing bibliography on the
portrait of More's family (surviving in a drawing sent to Erasmus now in SS collar.
Basel), an elaborate new clock hangs over the heads of the sitters. This

25

7'l - See Otto Picht, 'Holbein and
Kratzer', pp. 134-139.
73 - For an interesting discussion of this
general situation, see jean Leclercq, 'The
experience of time and its interpretation
in the late middle ages', Studiu in Mlflieval
Crdtrm, 8/9 (1976), pp. 137-150i also
recently, David 5. Landes, &volldion in
7iml: Clodu euu.l 1M Making oftM Modm&
World (Cambridge, lfA: Harvard UP,
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1983). The traditional symbolism of
clocks, particularly in the portraits of
Titian, is discussed by E. Panofsky,
Problmu in 1iti1111, Mostly letmOgrapkic (New
York: New York UP, 1969), pp. 88-go.
26 MARK ROSKILL AND CRAIG HARBISON
object certainly brings to mind Holbein's collaboration with Nikolaus
Kratzer, tutor to More's children, 'deviser of the King's horologes', and
the person who wrote the explanatory inscriptions on Holbein's drawing
ofthe family.72 Here the clock is no longer the time-honoured symbol of
mortality, but now no doubt an indication of the orderly, p~ecisely­
calculated nature of the More family's day. Part of that day included the
educational activities, reading and discussion, which Holbein has
portrayed. One could hardly have helped realizing that this new sense of
time bears both interesting similarities to and differences from the 'old'
monastic time, the canonical hours of the day and their readings and
meditations. 73 Thus again a tension, a provocative juxtaposition, of
times.
Holbein's portraiture is not an art based on the lack of other
commissions. Nor is it explained simply as a response to his artistically-
troubled times. The artist positively takes up old elements with the new.
He both dislocates and recombines, using for instance, alongside the
new-fashioned clock in the More family portrait, the old-fashioned
Flemish still-lifes on windowsill and chest. To achieve the startling effect
he did, one means available to him was - whether consciously or
unconsciously adopted it is difficult to say- to make his images work like
similes. Whatever the case, these portraits do not consistently work like
either emblematic handbooks or digests of artistic tradition or styHstic
insecurity, as some Italian portraits of the time seem to.
Seeing Holbein's portraits as visual similes, or embellishments on a
subject, speaks to the action of the work of art itself, as a whole. Holbein's
artfulness as well as his knowledge of texts is subsumed here. This
approach grows naturally out of the material, rather than out of
prescribed modes of analysis for visual tradition, presentation or
symbolism. In that sense, Holbein's historical context has been
reinforced, by discussing the ways the visual interest of the imagery is
related to the particular thematic issues that are found at the time.
It certainly was a time of change, a time when a fig was not yet just a fig
but no longer just the visual equivalent or mark of a narrowly defined
concept. For Holbein's work, the issue of time and change is a crucial
element. A compelling reason to make portraits work like similes may
have been to enable one to convey a sense of time and its connections.
Past, present, future and eternity collapsed together: meaning seen or
sensed as a process, a process of change. Old worn-out objects are
combined with flashy new ones. Significance comes from a certain
meaningfulness juxtaposed with randomness: objects put together in time
and space to see what they would say to each other both in and across
those elements. This seems part of the creative power that made
Holbein's portraits glories both in his time and far beyond it.