Excerpt from The Work of Hans Holbein: Reproduced in 252 Illustrations<br><br>The age in which Hans Holbein lived and worked was the age of what has been called The New Learning. It was an age of practical achievements, of adventures, of undertakings for the pur pose of material gains. It was the age of conquest and colonization for worldly benefits, an age the logical outcome of the Renaissance. Prior to this age people were moved by faith in the invisible and unknowable; the imagination played the principal part in human hopes and aspirations. But with the discovery of the New World and the achievements of the Reformation a new Spirit possessed men. They saw that the world was rich in the means for making life pleasant and desirable. All that was necessary was to dig and delve and shape What was there to hand; or, to go out and adventure for the prizes that were there to Win. The spirit of this age was thus a realizing spirit, and it is this realizing spirit that Holbein pos sessed and evinced in his works.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.