better opportunities in England. Through
a letter of introduction written by Eras-
mus, Holbein met Sir Thomas More, who
was serving as a chancellor for Henry VIII.
Holbein returned to Basel in 1528, com-
pleting several more woodcut series for
books as well asThe Artist’s Family, a pic-
ture of his wife and two children. Although
he planned to settle in Basel, Holbein
found that the Protestant Reformation un-
der the leadership of Huldrych Zweingli
was hostile to patronage of artists by the
church. In 1532 he returned to England
and became a citizen of London.
At the royal court, Holbein painted a
series of royal portraits, and also served as
a designer of ceremonial clothing, monu-
ments, and palace decor. Holbein painted
the king, the king’s wives and courtiers,
and notables such as More, Thomas Crom-
well, Desiderius Erasmus, Sir Henry Guild-
ford, the astronomer Nicholas Kratzer, and
William Warham, the archbishop of Can-
terbury. Holbein also earned many por-
trait commissions from the German mer-
chants living in London. His portraits—
carefully prepared pencil or chalk sketches
that were transferred directly to oak pan-
els—are masterpieces of color, strong out-
line, and realistic detail, especially in the
depiction of the emotions and character
of their subjects. Holbein was among the
first portrait painters to gain renown; be-
fore his time, portraitists were simply arti-
sans who prepared a work of art much as
a carpenter creates a piece of furniture.
SEEALSO: Erasmus, Desiderius; Henry VIII;
More, Sir Thomas
humanism ........................................
The culture of the Renaissance was mod-
eled on a new doctrine of art and philoso-
phy known as humanism. Based on the
revival of classical scholarship in medieval
Italy, humanism took man as the new
measure of things, and ignored the Chris-
tian traditions of miracles, sin and repen-
tance, and ultimate salvation. Humanism
lay outside the doctrines of the church,
the dominant social and cultural institu-
tion of the Middle Ages. It broke with the
past in elevating individual talent and in-
spiration above spirituality and faith. Hu-
manism was the aspect of the Renaissance
that had the most drastic and lasting im-
pact on European culture, one that re-
mains significant in modern times.
The study of ancient Latin and Greek
authors revived the field of natural phi-
losophy—the investigation of the sur-
rounding world, without considering my-
thology or religious faith, and how that
world is organized and functions. The
Christian emphasis on humility and faith
took a secondary position, replaced by the
contemplation of beauty and how a sense
of balance, proportion, and seriousness re-
flects inner virtue. To reach these ideals,
education and study of the liberal arts—
and the classical texts—were held as a ba-
sic requirement of the well-rounded
Renaisssance individual, and absolutely
necessary to the ability of a prince to rule
justly and wisely.
Humanism was first displayed in the
work of Petrarch, the Italian scholar and
poet who was the first to offer a critical
analysis of classical authors. Petrarch rep-
resented thinking contrary to that of the
medieval scholastics, who founded their
philosophies on interpretations of the
Bible and the early church fathers, and on
medieval scholars who concentrated on
dry, lifeless, logical theories to explain the
workings of the divine. Petrarch studied
original texts, ignoring interpretations of
medieval commentators and striving to
reach the original meaning as revealed inhumanism