Excerpt from Holbein<br><br>Italy. There are extant pictures by him dating from the year 1508 onwards which completely belong to the style of the Renaissance, not only in the external sense that in the architecture and decorative frames of the pictures antique forms have taken the place of the Gothic, but also in this essential respect, that the figures have acquired a greater roundness and softness of form, the drapery has a freer, larger cast, and all the lines a more animated impulse. His altar piece in the Pinakothek at Munich, the Altar of St. Sebastian, is one of the gems of German painting in the Renaissance style.<br><br>In spite of the esteem which the elder Holbein enjoyed as a painter, he fared badly in his old age. He left Augsburg in the year 1517, on account of financial difficulties, and died in 1524 at Isenheim in Alsace.<br><br>His sons, both of whom he had educated to succeed him in the practice of his art, left their native town even earlier and betook themselves to Basle, where there is evidence for the activity of Hans Holbein from 1515 and for that of Ambrosius from 1516 onwards.<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.