One of the four leading Old Masters of the 16th century German Renaissance - the others being Albrecht Durer of Nuremberg, Matthias Grunewald of Mainz, and Lucas Cranach the Elder of Wittenberg - Holbein dominated portraiture in Switzerland and England during his day, proving himself a worthy successor to earlier Northern Renaissance artists of the Flemish School under Jan van Eyck and his follower Petrus Christus. Born in Augsburg, Holbein was active first in Basel (1515-26) and then London (1526-28), before returning to Basel for four years (1528-32) in order to maintain his citizenship. Soon after his return to Basel, he bought a house in St Johanns-Vorstadt with the proceeds of his London commissions. Unfortunately, the iconoclastic fallout from Luther's Revolt was beginning to have its effect. Demand for fine art - other than propagandist Protestant Reformation art - was at an all-time low. Fortunately, perhaps due to his return from England, Holbein retained the confidence of the new City Council. He was asked to complete the mural paintings for the Council Chamber of the Town Hall, which he had helped to initiate in 1519, although the new Lutheran regime obliged him to use Old Testament themed Biblical art for the murals instead of the previous mythological themes, as before. He also did private work for former clients like Jakob Meyer, including some altarpiece art and portraiture. It was also during his stay in Basel that Holbein painted The Artist's Family (his wife Elsbeth Schmid, with their two eldest children, Philipp and Katherina) (1528, Kunstmuseum Basel). In the Spring of 1532, almost certainly due to a lack of patronage, Holbein said goodbye to his family and set off back to London.
Holbein's initial commissions during his second and final stay in England, included a number of portraits of Lutheran merchants of the Hanseatic League, the commercial confederation of merchant guilds active in cities along the coast of the Baltic and the North Sea. In London, the Hanseatic merchants lived around the Steelyard, a complex warren of storehouses, offices, and dwellings on the north bank of the Thames. Located south of Cheapside, this Hansa area boasted its own guildhall, weighing house, chapels, and counting houses, and formed the largest single medieval trading area in London. To facilitate his sitters, Holbein rented a house in nearby Maiden Lane as a studio. His two greatest portrait paintings of Hanseatic merchants were the portrayals of Georg Gisze of Danzig and Derich Berck of Cologne. In addition to portraiture, Holbein completed two large-scale works of mythological painting for the guildhall of the Steelyard, as well as a large piece of street art for Anne Boleyn's procession through the city on 31 May 1533, the eve of her coronation.
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