Word: holbeins
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...dance of death, along with the ship of fools, was the obsession of so much European painting and writing. For The Triumph of Death, lonesco reaches not only to Albert Camus, but also back to the Bruegel painting that bears the same title and beyond that to Holbein, to the tradition of the 15th century frescoes of Palermo, to medieval mysteries and moralities crudely performed in the streets...
House guests would find him in "a kind of Holbein square cap of velvet and black velvet coat," scattering bread on the lawn for the birds. In the spring of 1900, when he was 57, he shaved off his beard and felt "forty and clean and light." His bared face revealed surprising strength-the iron spirituality of a worldly archbishop...
With greater directness, the Pinakothek's altarpiece by Holbein the Elder (see overleaf) barkens back to the medieval tradition that aimed at letting art speak out the Gospel truth. The work spells out the Scriptures visually, spares earthen colors, such as ochers and umbers, to enhance the clashing confrontation, as in the cloaks, of liquidy greens and reds. The carved and gilded frames are showpieces of Gothic craftsmanship, but within the woodcarving can be seen classic marble columns, first tentative annunciation that the new spirit of the Renaissance was beginning to blow through German art. And the Virgin...
Only 18 years after the completion of Holbein's Kaisheim altarpiece, Hans Baldung (also called Grien for his verdant tones) painted an almost surrealistic Nativity. By then, the firm order of the Middle Ages was collapsing in Germany, Martin Luther was challenging the church, and Baldung reflected the tottering universe in strange, dislocated paintings...
Purists protest that such tours de force rely more on hired technicians and expensive presses than on the artist's guiding hand, but Director Lieberman doubts that the artist ever really loses control. Furthermore, he says, collaboration is not that new: "Holbein never cut his woodcuts, nor did Durer; someone else did it for them...