Double portrait of Jakob Meyer zum Hasen and Dorothea Kannengießer

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Jakob Meyer
Dorothea Meyer

The double portrait of Jakob Meyer zum Hasen and Dorothea Kannengießer was created in 1516 by the German Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger on behalf of Basel Mayor Jakob Meyer zum Hasen with oil paints on linden wood (each 38.5 cm × 31 cm) . The portraits of the mayor and his second wife Dorothea Kannengießer are stylistically linked to pictorial designs that Holbein could have studied in his hometown Augsburg . They mark the beginning of both Holbein's career as a portrait painter and his relationship with Jakob Meyer as a client. The panels have been in the Kunstmuseum Basel since the 19th century .

Image description

The portraits show Jakob Meyer and Dorothea Kannengießer in front of richly decorated architecture in the Renaissance style , which reveals a plain sky-blue background. Both spouses are shown as half-length figures in three-quarter profile , with Jakob Meyer looking to the right and Dorothea Kannengießer to the left, so that the portrayed appear to be looking at each other for the viewer. Both of them hold their arms loosely crossed in front of their bodies, with Dorothea Kannengießer's hands lying outside the picture space, while Jakob Meyer's hands appear superimposed in the lower right corner of the picture. The left hand stretched out towards the viewer is adorned with gold rings on the thumb and forefinger that hold a coin, while the right hand is loosely placed over the back of the left hand and points to Dorothea Kannengießer.

Both panels are connected by the architectural element of three pillars and two arches that extends over the background of both pictures. Jakob Meyer is placed a little forward in front of the massive central pillar, while his wife is shown set back in front of a wide arched opening. He is dressed in a white shirt with a pleated collar and embroidered, a black jacket and a red beret , from under which full curly black hair peeks out, quite expensive, but not particularly gorgeous. She wears a red dress with black trimmings on the wide, slit-like neckline in the middle and on the sleeve hem. The blouse that Dorothea Kannengießer wears underneath, which is also wide-cut, is, like the neckline of the dress, embroidered with gold-colored thread and also decorated with sewn-on strings. A narrow braided gold and a light pearl necklace interspersed with individual gold balls run down over both shoulders and are hidden in the cleavage by the blouse. The hair is completely covered by a white cap that encloses the head tightly and around which a transparent cloth with golden stripes is wrapped, which falls loosely from the back of the head over the right shoulder and right arm down.

Jakob Meyer's family coat of arms on the back of the male portrait

Unlike her husband with his consistently strong complexion, Dorothea Kannengießer is shown with a pale, porcelain-colored complexion and only slightly reddened cheeks. Both people seem stern, serious and unmoved in their demeanor. Although the double portrait addresses the togetherness of the couple, Holbein succeeds in maintaining the independence and diversity of the people.

The background is formed by two arches supported by columns and a pillar, so that the people on the two outer edges of the picture are each framed by a round gray column with gilded stucco decoration in the form of grape leaves and grapes. The arches, of which the left is only hinted at, rest on the right and left on these pillars and are supported in the middle by a solid, gray plastered central pillar, into which four red marble pillars are set on the right side, facing Dorothea Kannengießer. Above it runs a frieze with stylized tendrils and small putti as well as a small shield in which the signature HH 1516 is engraved. The barrel vault of the arch is richly decorated with square coffers in which golden flower carvings are attached on a black background.

The family coat of arms of the Meyer family is affixed to the back of the portrait of Jakob Meyer; it is dated 1520 and was probably not made by Holbein, but by a Basel coat of arms painter.

Background of the creation

After Jakob Meyer's first wife died in 1511, he married Dorothea Kannengießer from Thann in Alsace at the latest in 1513 . The commission to Hans Holbein for the double portrait came at the height of Meyer's career, who was elected mayor of the city of Basel on June 14, 1516; the successful choice may have been the reason for the commission. Hans Holbein, on the other hand, was at the beginning of his career - he probably came to Basel with his brother Ambrosius Holbein in 1515, where he probably entered the workshop of the painter Hans Herbst . The double portrait is the oldest surviving portrait and one of the earliest surviving oil paintings that can be attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger as the sole work.

Jakob Meyer remains important as a client for Holbein's further work in Basel: In 1521 the city of Basel - Meyer was still mayor at the time - commissioned Holbein to paint the hall of the Grand Council in Basel's town hall (the hall with the mural has not been preserved). In 1526 Jakob Meyer, who had meanwhile lost his office as mayor because of a corruption affair and was critical of the Reformation, commissioned Holbein with a monumental portrait of the Virgin Mary, on which Jakob Meyer, his two wives, their daughter Anna, in addition to the Mother of God and the baby Jesus , and two boys that cannot be identified with certainty are depicted, presumably as an epitaph for a planned family grave in Basel's Martinskirche (the painting known as the Darmstadt Madonna is now in the Würth private collection ).

  • Portrait study Jakob Meyer

  • Portrait study Dorothea Kannengießer

  • Portrait of Johannes Paumgartner by Hans Burgkmair the Elder. Ä.

  • Draft drawing of the facade design for the house "zum Tanz" by Hans Holbein the Elder. J.

  • Portrait of a youth in front of rich architecture by Ambrosius Holbein

In preparation for the painting, Holbein made two drawings with silver pencil , black pencil and red chalk , on which he recorded the faces and details of the clothing. In arranging the people and designing the background, he was probably based on a woodcut by the Augsburg artist Hans Burgkmair the Elder. Ä. who, with his portrait of Johannes Paumgartner, chose a comparable staging under an arched architecture. Burgkmair had already used the connection of two portraits through an architecture with a pillar in his double portrait of Barbara and Hans Schellenberger.

The position of the head and the direction of the gaze can be traced back to the double portrait of Hans and Felicitas Tucher by Albrecht Dürer as a possible model. Hans Holbein only used the same head posture that he used in Jakob Meyer's portrait afterwards. He later gave up the difficult depiction of nose and cheek, which overlap in this head position, in favor of the more easily realizable three-quarter profile view, which he also used for Dorothea Kannengießer's portrait. The design of the arch with square fields filled with stylized flowers and the frieze with tendrils and putti can be found in numerous designs by Holbein for facade paintings (e.g. for the “Hertensteinhaus” or the “Haus zum Tanz”) and cracked windows , but also the left wing of the Oberried altar , and probably go back to Venetian models. Ambrosius Holbein also took up these details of the architecture as well as the positioning of the sitter in his portrait of a young man in front of rich architecture from 1518.

Provenance

After the deaths of Jakob Meyer and Dorothea Kannengießer, the double portrait remained in the family's property until the 19th century. Remigius Faesch , a great-great-grandson of the couple depicted, who had inherited the painting, founded an art collection that remained in the Faesch family's possession as the "Faeschisches Kabinett" even after his death in 1667 and was transferred to the University of Basel in 1823 , where together with the "Amerbach-Kabinett" compiled by Bonifacius Amerbach , another of Holbein's clients, it finally formed the basis of the Kunstmuseum Basel . As part of this Faesch collection, the double portrait, together with the two preparatory silver pen drawings, came to the Kunstmuseum Basel, where it is recorded with inventory number 312 and is now shown in the permanent exhibition.

literature

  • Kunstmuseum Basel: Hans Holbein the Elder J. - The years in Basel 1515–1532. Prestel, Munich 2006.
  • Oskar Bätschmann, Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein. DuMont, Cologne 1997.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Hans Holbein d. J. - The years in Basel . In: Kunstmuseum Basel (ed.): Exhibition catalog . Prestel, Munich 2006, p. 161, 164-165, ill. Pp. 162-163, 166-167 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Oskar Bätschmann / Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein . 1st edition. DuMont, Cologne 1997, p. 36, 38–39, ill. Pp. 37, 40–41 .
  3. ^ A b Oskar Bätschmann / Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein . 1st edition. DuMont, Cologne 1997, p. 38 .
  4. ^ Oskar Bätschmann / Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein . 1st edition. DuMont, Cologne 1997, p. 36 .

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